The Lexington Minutemen Baseball Team played well overall, but the Richmond Spartans had two big innings and came away with a 6 to 1 win in the Conference opener for both teams, a week ago Tuesday in Richmond.

The Minutemen had a great opportunity to jump on top early, as they loaded the bases in the first inning, with three well hit balls by Alex Kraft, Hunter Meyer and Trey Perez, but they could not score and came up empty handed.

The game remained scoreless until the bottom of the third inning, where Richmond scored three times with doubles by Weston Allen and Jacob Lieberknecht being the big blows to make the score 3-0.

That score held until the sixth inning when the Minutemen broke the ice. Braxton Emerson was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning, and he then stole both second and third, and scored on an infield single by Isac Huffman to cut Richmond’s lead to 3-1. The Spartans then broke the game open in the bottom of the frame, as they batted around and scored three runs, with Noah Stevens-Brehm getting the big hit. and they came away with the 6 to 1 victory.

Perez was the tough luck loser on the mound for Lexington, as he allowed 4 earned runs over 5 2/3 innings on 5 hits, while striking out 4 and walking 3, with one hit batter. Kraft pitched the final 1/3 of an inning, giving up one hit. Kraft led the Minutemen offense with 2 hits, while Meyer, Huffman and Perez each had one. The Lexington hitters made good contact throughout the 7 inning game, as they had only 3 strikeouts.

The Lexington Boys dropped a Conference road game last Thursday to Holden by the score of 13 to 6.