Bracken County’s Hank Krift delivers to the plate during their contest with Augusta on Friday at Augusta Park. Krift got the win on the mound, striking out 13 in a 11-0 shutout. (Evan Dennison, The Ledger Independent)

Bracken County’s Hank Krift delivers to the plate during their contest with Augusta on Friday at Augusta Park. Krift got the win on the mound, striking out 13 in a 11-0 shutout. (Evan Dennison, The Ledger Independent)

HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL

<p>Augusta’s Will Kelsch sends a pitch to home plate in Friday’s 39th District battle with Bracken County. (Evan Dennison, The Ledger Independent)</p>

Augusta’s Will Kelsch sends a pitch to home plate in Friday’s 39th District battle with Bracken County. (Evan Dennison, The Ledger Independent)

AUGUSTA — Bracken County used the long ball early to get out in front and let the arm of Hank Krift do the rest.

The Polar Bears clubbed three home runs, knocked three other doubles and got 13 strikeouts from Krift in a 11-0 victory over Augusta on Friday night in the 39th District seeded matchup at Augusta Park.

Nathan Jefferson started off the home run brigade in the first, shattering a car windshield in left center field to get the Polar Bears a 2-0 lead. Michael Clark added a two-run double to put a four spot up for the Polar Bears in the opening frame.

Then it was Joshua Hamilton’s turn, his two-run shot his fifth of the season to make it 6-0 in the second. Ross Lucas added another, a solo job to make it a 7-0 game two innings in.

“Talked to the guys before the game about being aggressive. Liked what I saw early on. We still have a couple guys that need to pick it up hitting wise, but other than that I feel like it’s starting to come together,” Polar Bears coach Rob Krift said.

Krift got to work from there. After allowing two runners on in the first, one via an infield single and the other a hit by pitch, he’d retire the next nine batters, seven of them via the strikeout before Kylan Hinson reached on an error in the bottom of the fourth. Evan Brooks singled behind Hinson to start a two-out rally, but were unable to scratch a run across in the inning, Krift getting Mason Davis to ground out.

Panthers pitcher Will Kelsch settled in after a rocky first two innings, allowing just two earned runs from there to extend the game as long as possible before the Panthers got run-ruled for the first time this season in the sixth inning.

“Rough first inning, thought we should have been out of there with no runs, but they’re a good baseball team, they’ve played a lot of baseball, played a lot of years together and their coach does a good job,” Panthers coach Robin Kelsch said. “They make contact and that’s what happens. You hit it out here then you’re really hitting it. Thought Will did a heck of a job after the second inning. First game we’ve been run-ruled all year so there’s tons of improvement for us so far.”

The Panthers threatened in the fifth and sixth innings with runners in scoring position in both frames, but were unable to find the timely hit to get the goose egg off the board.

Krift was a big reason for that, striking out five batters when the threat presented itself in those innings. In the end, he allowed just three hits, hit two batters and didn’t walk one in the complete game effort. He entered as the team’s strikeout leader with 32 on the season, adding 13 more to that total Friday night.

“Hank loves games like this. Big crowds and just pumping the mitt was the focus tonight. Didn’t walk a batter, really talked about cutting down his pitch count and taking care of the walks and stuff and he’s done a pretty good job with that. His curve ball wasn’t working early and then it started working towards the end of the game.”

Clark led the Polar Bears with three RBI, Hamilton and Jefferson with two apiece from their home runs. The Polar Bears tallied 14 hits in the contest, six of them extra-base hits.

“The problem when you start seeing balls go over the fence, everybody starts thinking that they’re going to hit it out and then they stop thinking about what they need to do at the plate and on the basepaths. High school baseball, any ball could drop at any given time and we need to focus more on putting our head down and running it out instead of thinking about other things,” Krift said.

The win gets them to 9-9 on the season and 1-1 in district play as they’ll head to Paris on Saturday. They’re scheduled to play eight games in between their next district contest when they host Augusta on May 22 before closing out their district slate with Mason County on May 24.

After Augusta got their first win of the season on Thursday night in a win over Ludlow, the Panthers dropped to 1-6 with a 0-1 record in district play. They’ve got five games to work on things before they face Mason County on May 17 and 20 for district contests, the first one being in Maysville. They’ll close out their district slate in Brooksville on May 22.

Kason Hinson, Evan Brooks and John Paul Cordle collected the Panthers hits on the day, Hinson and Cordle with doubles.

Kelsch took the loss on the mound, going the distance and allowing 14 hits, six earned runs, striking out seven and walking four while hitting a batter. Augusta plays at Ripley on Saturday.

“We’ve got a lot of games coming up and we like our chances. We make a few plays here or there and clean them up and get some good quality pitching, we’ve just got to hit the ball. Krift pitched a great game, but that’s the area we need to catch up in. Have to put it in play, when you do you put pressure on them they bobbled it a little bit, when you strike out you don’t have a chance. Happy with our improvement and we’re going to keep battling.”

POLAR BEARS 11, PANTHERS 0 (6 INNINGS)

BRACKEN COUNTY — 430-022-x — 11-14-3

AUGUSTA — 000-000-x — 0-3-3

2B — (BC) Hamilton, Combess, Clark (A) Kason Hinson, Cordle

HR — (BC) Jefferson, Hamilton, Lucas

RBI — Clark 3, Jefferson 2, Hamilton 2, Krift, Lucas, Rudd

WP — Krift. LP — Kelsch.

Records: Bracken County (9-9, 1-1), Augusta (1-6, 0-1)