The Norris Titan Varsity baseball team defeated the Crete Cardinals 9-5 at Crete on Tuesday, March 23, 2010. In the JV game Norris defeated Crete 19-1 in five innings.In the second game of the season Crete took the lead in the bottom of the first inning. After two walks, the Crete clean-up hitter Sattler drove in a run with a triple, but the Titans made a great relay throw from Ben Oltman to Ben Bentzinger to get the second runner out at the plate getting the Titans out a tough first inning jam.Blake Price was the starting pitcher for the Titans and threw 3 2/3 innings, striking out two and walking four to pick up the win for Norris. Ryan Ormonde came on in the fourth inning and finished the game for his second save of the season.Norris was lead at the plate by Ben Bentzinger and Spencer Evans who each had three hits. Ben had two doubles and drove in two runs, also Chris Velander drove in two runs with two sacrifice flys.With the Titans trailing 1-0 in the fourth inning, Spencer Evans lead off with a single, Spencer stole second and Taylor TeKolste singled followed by a sacrifice fly by Chris Velander to tie the game at 1. Trent Peterson singled next, followed by a single by Ben Bentzinger, and finally a single by Ben Oltman gave the Titans a 4-1 lead.Crete cut the lead to 4-2 by scoring one run in the bottom of the fourth. The Titans responded in the fifth by scoring two runs to take a 6-2 lead; Kaleb Andersen walked, Spencer Evans singled, Kaleb scored on a wild pitch, and Chris Velander drove in Spencer with a sacrifice fly.In the bottom of the fifth, the Cardinals would score two to cut the lead to 6-4. Norris answered in the top of the sixth by scoring two runs. Ben Bentzinger led off with a double, Ben Oltman walked, Ben Kruger bunted the runners into scoring position, Nate Gloria singled in one run, and Spencer Evans drove in Ben to give the Titans an 8-4 lead.Crete scored one run in the bottom of the sixth to cut the lead, and the Titans scored one in the top of seventh to keep the lead at four runs, 9-5. Taylor TeKolste started the seventh being hit by a pitch and Ben Bentzinger drove him in with a clutch two-out double, his second double of the game.Ryan Ormonde closed the game 1-2-3 in the bottom of seventh with two strikeouts to preserve the win and get his second save in as many games. With the victory Norris goes to 2-0 on the season while Crete drops to 0-2.The Norris Varsity and JV baseball teams are back in action on Thursday, March 25 in their home openers at Hickman Field taking on Platte Valley (Yutan) who won the Class C state legion baseball title last summer. Hope you will come out to cheer on the Titans, it will be a tough game with Yutan.