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HRs power Poteet past Wakeland, into Class 4A Region II final

COLLEYVILLE — Mesquite Poteet’s senior baseball players will celebrate the end of their years as high school students at Saturday’s graduation. Thanks to the pitching of Chad Young and a barrage of home runs, those seniors will also be celebrating something that didn’t end Friday night.

Poteet’s season continues after beating Frisco Wakeland, 10-2, on in front of an overflow crowd at Colleyville Heritage. Young pitched 62/3 innings and struck out 13, and third baseman Javier Soltero smashed a pair of home runs and had five RBIs as Poteet (30-6) advanced to the Class 4A Region II finals. Poteet will play the winner of the matchup of Rockwall-Heath and Waxahachie.

Young and Wakeland starter Willie Schwanke were in control through three innings, but the fourth turned into a slugfest. Blake Griffin gave Poteet a 1-0 lead with a homer to left, and Soltero pounded a three-run homer off the scoreboard in left.

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Wakeland (35-6) cut the lead to 4-2 with back-to-back homers by Ryan O’Hearn and Sean McCracken in the bottom half of the inning, but the only rallies after that came from Poteet, which padded its lead with two unearned runs in the fifth. It then got four more runs in the sixth inning, which included Soltero’s second homer of the game — this time to right field.

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Wakeland’s last threat came in the bottom of the sixth, when it loaded the bases with no outs. But Young still had enough in the tank to end the inning with two strikeouts and a groundout against a lineup that had been potent throughout the season.