The Miners took their first step toward a dream season on Wednesday beating Grantsville 13-5.

The game, which was played where a day later than scheduled after snowstorms cancelled the original one, was what head coach Howard Hoyt called a solid first game.

“I was good but not a great game,” he said. “It’s what I expected from a first game.”

The Miners collected 13 runs, nine hits and four errors in the game. Hoyt said he was most happy to see that none of the errors were mental mistakes. With a team full of talented seniors who have been playing together since grammar school, he highlighted the fact that the team was playing smart and cohesively with one another.

Offensively the Miners got a number of good hits, including extra base hits from Chris Shapard and Marshall Crawford, but Hoyt said he is still concerned about the team getting the right hit at the right time.

“I would classify us as too conservative at times and at some points, not conservative enough,” he said.

Crawford finished the game with five RBI and Shapard had two.

He was specifically talking about some of the heavy swings that were taken when the bases were loaded and the batter had a two-strike count.

“Those are times we just need to get the ball in play,” Hoyt said.

The Miners’ pitching staff had a strong showing with pitchers Alex Thomas, Dakota Matherly and Crawford each pitching about three innings and Shapard coming into close the game.

The Miners will take this experience with them to the Richfield Tournament this weekend. The team was scheduled to play two games after press time Friday and then hopefully advance to the final game Saturday. Hoyt plans to use the event to try players at different positions and to give some of the newer members of the bullpen a turn on the mound.

“We got some takeaways [from the Grantsville game] and will work on them this weekend,” he said.

The trip southward should also allow the boys to play in some warmer weather after a rather chilly start to the season.

“Wednesday was perfect football weather, not baseball,” said Hoyt, chuckling.