The Western Nebraska Community College bid for a Region IX title will begin Thursday when the Cougars will face Lamar Community College in the first-round of the Region IX tournament.
                WNCC earned the third seed for the tournament and will battle the sixth-seed Lamar at 11 a.m. in Pueblo, Colorado. The other first-round game will have No. 5 Otero College battle No. 4 McCook Community College at 2 p.m.
                The tournament will be played at Runyon Park in Pueblo, Colorado. Runyon Park is very similar to Cleveland Field with a turf infield and grass outfield. Video of the tournament will be on the TSBN Sports Network at https://tsbnsports.com/2025-region-9-baseball-tournament/.
                The losers of the first two games will play Thursday night at 5 p.m. Friday’s schedule will have No. 2 seed Northeastern Junior College facing the winner of the Lamar/WNCC game at 11 a.m. followed by No. Southeast Community College battling the winner of the Otero/McCook game at 2 p.m. The tournament continues through Sunday with the winner advancing West District Finals May 15-17 at the Utah/Nevada champion.
                WNCC enters the tournament with a 25-24 record and split with NJC to close out the seasons, winning the first two games against the Plainsmen 13-5 and 7-3, and falling in the final two games 5-0 and 7-0.
                Lamar enters with a 23-32 record and won 1-3 against Otero last weekend as well as just winning 1-3 against McCook the week before.
                WNCC head coach Mike Jones said his team just needs to play well because they have the potential to do good things in the tournament.
                Head-to-head, the Cougars and Lamar split when the Runnin’ Lopes came to Cleveland Field April 6-7. The Cougars won both games on Friday 1-0 and 20-5, and then fell 11-1 and 6-2 on Saturday. Friday’s 1-0 win over Lamar saw a near perfect game from starting pitcher Clay Brandon, where he allowed just one hit and faced just 21 batters in the win.
“For us it will be important for us to score enough runs,” Jones said. “Our pitchers have been pretty good throughout the season and our defense has been pretty good. Coach (Ryan) Burgner has put together a pretty good scouting report on the other team’s offenses, so on the defensive end we feel pretty good. We will face some really good pitching and everyone will come after you with everything they got. It will be important for us to find ways to score runs.”
Jones said that Lamar is not a bad team. The Runnin’ Lopes have 15 Region IX titles since 1972 and last won the title in 2019 when they defeated WNCC. WNCC has won the Region IX title twice, the first time in 2008 and then in 2021 when they defeated Southeast Community College. Southeast has won the last four Region IX titles.
Jones said Lamar will be a tough opponent.
“Lamar is a really good team,” he said. “They are a good ball club and they have a good offensive approach, they have some good pitching, they play with some energy, they will do a lot of things right, and they put the ball in play and challenge you with strikes. There is no secret and there is no holes in their team so we will play our ball game and see how it all plays out.”
The offensive can score as they have scored double-figure runs in 16 of their games this season. There were times they were shut out or scored just one run, seven time to be exact.
The offense has plenty of potential from a lot of guys as eight players are hitting over .300 and eight players have four or more home runs. Vaughn Wilson leads the offense with his .385 batting average. He also has five home runs on the year with 49 runs scored and 30 RBIs.
Jin Kobayakawa is next with a .380 batting average and the freshman has five home runs with 40 RBIs and 38 runs scored.
The next rest of the .300 hitters included Ren Sato at .350, Matt Levesque at .344, Cooper Wilson at .320, Cooper Burgess at .315, Landon Lockwood at .303, and Will Harbison at .302.
Burgess lead s the team with six home runs while collecting eight doubles, 36 RBIs, and scoring 30 runs.
Vaughn Wilson and Kobayakawa lead the team in doubles with 15 and 12 respectively.
Jones said they have plenty of depth with guys that can get a base hit. And, Jones, said, they can score runs, it is just getting consistent in scoring runs that will the regional tournament.
“That is a really good question and if I had the answer I would feel a lot better about it,” he said. “It is tough as young ball players and the guys start to see really good pitching. They come at  you with really good fastballs, tight-spin breaking balls, and change-ups all for strikes and it puts you on the defensive end. So, for us, it will be important for us to be a little bit more aggressive and not so defensive.”
                Once the offense finds it’s groove, the Cougars can be dangerous. The Cougars have scored 350 runs this season, but they also have allowed 359 runs. So, it is 50-50 of how things play out and that is where their record stands, about 50-50.
                But once they find that groove, Jones knows this team can be dangerous.
                “We do have a lot of guys in our lineup that can do a lot of impressive things,” he said. “We are not always the most consistent line-up, but we have a whole lot of guys that we could put in there that can do amazing things.”
The one area that has been standing out is the pitching staff, which has been doing well on the mound recently. The pitching staff has a combined 7.24 ERA, but their opponents ERA is a 7.46. Reliever Alex Renfrow leads the team in ERAs at 2.87. Renfrow has four saves to his credit. Clayden Brandon is next at 3.23 ERA with 63 strikeouts in 61.1 innings pitched. Ian Grafmank, another reliever, has a 4.7 ERA followed by starter Julian Garza at 6.00, starter Rocco Harmon at 6.32, reliever Austin Neeley at 6.92, and then starter/reliever Allard Helms at 8.06 and then Cam Meyer at 8.31.
WNCC’s starting pitching will be a day-to-day decision as the regular season rotation might be changed. The four main pitchers for the Cougars during the season included Brandon, Garza, Harmon, and Helms.
“Match-ups will become important and those will be game-time decisions on looking at the pitching match-ups to see who is fresh and ready to go or those that might be a little tired and need a little bit more rest,” Jones said. “Our pitching staff has been really good all season long. We have had some bad innings  in there, but they have continued along and continued to grow and have gotten a lot better.”
The goal is to win regionals and get to the district finals with a berth in the national tournament in Grand Junction, Colorado, the last part of May for the ultimate goal. The last Region IX team to play in the actual JUCO College World Series was Lamar back in the early 2000s.

Region IX Baseball Tournament
At Runyan Field in Pueblo, Colorado
 
Thursday, May 8
11 a.m. – Game 1: No. 3 WNCC vs. No. 6 Lamar
2 p.m. – Game 2: No. 4 McCook vs. No. 5 Otero
5 p.m. – Game 3: Losers of Games 1 and 2
Friday, May 9
11 a.m. –Game 4:  No. 2 NJC vs. winner WNCC/Lamar
2 p.m. – Game 5: No. 1 Southeast vs. winner of Otero/McCook
5 p.m. – Game 6: Winner Game 3 vs. lowest seed of G4/G5 loser
Saturday, May 10
11 a.m. – Game 7: Winner Game 6 vs. higher seed of G4/G5 loser
2 p.m. – Game 8: Winners of Game 4 and Game 5
5 p.m. – Game 9 – Game 7 winner vs. Game 8 loser.
Sunday, May 11
11 a.m. -- Game 10: Game 8 winner vs. Game 9 winner
2 p.m. – Game 11: If-necessary game if Game 8 winner losses