School Sports

VANDALIA - The Vandals made an offensive statement in a season-opening win against Ramsey.

The inexperienced pitching staff and defense may need a little time to catch up.

Vandalia scored consistently throughout the win against the Rams on Friday, but too many walks and errors allowed Ramsey to keep within striking distance in the 16-11 victory.

Coach Luke Hohlt said after the game that there were lessons to be learned, and that he believes the players who made mistakes today will grow from them as the season moves along.

VANDALIA – The revamped South Central Conference debuts this school year, and prior to each season, The Leader-Union will be asking Vandalia’s coaches how they think the changes will affect their team.

A list of all of the changes follows.

1)    Gillespie and Staunton have replaced East Alton-Wood River and Marquette Catholic.
2)    There will no longer be divisional play in any sport, with all teams that used to have divisions to play one game that counts in the conference standings.

The Lady Vandals may have started the season at 0-2, but had there not been an hour time limit at Saturday’s Noble Round-Robin, their record may have been better.

Losing to Hutsonville/Palestine, 4-3, in five innings, and Red Hill, 11-6, in three innings, Vandalia coach Brian Buscher didn’t have too many complaints about the games.

“We played pretty well the first game,” Buscher said. “We had a couple of errors, but it wasn’t a bad game. If there wasn’t a time limit, we probably could have scored more runs.”

The Vandalia boys track team opened its season at the Charleston Indoor Invitational on Saturday.

The Vandals finished in 25th place out of 33 teams.

Senior Wade Cowger would place fourth out of 46 runners, with a time of 2:08.74, in the 800-meter run.

Ben Strobel finished sixth out of 54 runners in the 1,600-meter run, with a personal-best time of 4:44.64, and Dalton Smith placed 11th of 28 in the 200-meter dash, with a time of 0:24.79.