Broncos baseball split games against challenging opponents at Red Devil Invitational

by Rhett Sifford
Sports Editor
While most of the student athletes in San Juan County were enjoying a week off for spring break, the San Juan High School baseball team was continuing a grueling start to the 2025 season with four more games this past weekend.
The Broncos made the short trip north to Moab for the Red Devil Invitational on Friday and Saturday, March 14-15 with two games on Friday and two on Saturday.
They opened against one of the toughest 2A teams in the state in Beaver – who sported a 5-1 record entering the weekend and left Moab as the only team to go undefeated in the tournament.
San Juan gave the Beavers a run for their money, opening the scoring on a sacrifice fly from Jake Ivins in the bottom of the second inning. Excellent pitching from Jaiten Knight kept Beaver off the board until they tied the game with a run in the top of the fourth.
The Beavers added another run in the fifth inning to take a 2-1 lead but San Juan answered emphatically with a home run from Talon Mendoza in the bottom of the fifth to tie the game at 2-2.
That’s where it stayed through the regulation seven innings, so the game required extra innings to decide. Beaver wasted no time, plating a run in the top of the eighth to break the tie. The Broncos were unable to answer in the bottom of the inning, and that brought the game to an end at 3-2.
It was a tough loss to open the tournament to be sure, but the fact that San Juan put on a very strong showing against one of the best teams in the state bodes well for the remainder of the season.
In addition to Mendoza’s home run Brody Bilbao got the only other hit for the Broncos. It was a tough loss for Jaiten Knight, who pitched an excellent game. He faced 34 batters, allowing just six hits and striking out four.
San Juan bounced back in a big way in game two, shellacking the host Grand County Red Devils 16-5 in a quick five-inning affair.
The Broncos scored two runs in the second inning and three in the third to take a 5-0 lead before Grand rallied to tie the game in the top of the fourth.
San Juan exploded for nine runs in the bottom of the fourth and added two in the fifth to bring the game to a close via ten-run rule.
Corbin Middleton led the offensive attack with an excellent game at the plate. He was 3-for-4 with five RBIs, a double, a triple, and two runs scored.
Knight had two hits, including a double, and three RBIs in the win. Cooper Palmer hit a single, a double, and drove in two runs. Baylor Nielson also drove in a couple runs with a double.
Bilbao and Remy Whatcott both had a hit and an RBI apiece while Cash Palmer, Nache Young, Branten Bethea, and Talon Mendoza all got one hit each.
Mendoza had a good day on the mound with six hits and no earned runs allowed. He struck out nine of the 23 Red Devil batters he faced in five innings of work.
San Juan began Saturday against another tough opponent in the 3A Emery Spartans, who had already beaten Grand County 9-2 and American Leadership Academy 7-1 in their first two games of the tourney.
The Broncos took an early 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first, but the Spartans plated two runs in the top of the second and one more in the third to take a 3-2 lead.
San Juan answered to tie the game in the bottom of the fourth inning, but that was all the offense the Broncos could muster in the game.
Emery scored two in the top of the fifth and held San Juan off the board for the final two innings on the way to a 5-3 win.
Branten Bethea, Cooper Palmer, and Nache Young all got two hits apiece in the loss with Palmer driving in the only earned run for San Juan.
Baylor Nielson pitched 4.2 innings for the Broncos, allowing ten hits and four earned runs while striking out two Emery batters. Ivins relieved him in the fifth, allowing one hit and striking out one.
San Juan closed out the weekend and the Red Devil Invite Saturday afternoon against another 3A opponent, American Leadership Academy.
The Broncos jumped on the Eagles early, scoring one run in the top of the first and four in the top of the second. American Leadership got on the board with a run in the bottom of the third, but San Juan plated three in the top of the fourth to go up 8-1.
The teams traded scoreless innings until the game headed into the bottom of the sixth and the Broncos needed just three more outs to secure their fifth win of the season.
That’s when the Eagles gave San Juan a bit of a scare as they proceeded to score six runs in the inning. The Broncos hung on for dear life, finally ending American Leadership’s rally with the final out and an 8-7 win.
Baylor Nielson drove in three runs for San Juan with a bases-clearing double in the second inning. Mendoza and Knight both had two-hit games with one RBI apiece.
Bethea and Cooper Palmer had one hit and one RBI each. Bilbao and Middleton had two hits each and Ivins got one hit.
Middleton pitched five strong innings before it started to fall apart in the sixth. He ultimately allowed just four hits and four runs while striking out three.
Ivins came on in a desperate situation to close the game out. He faced seven batters, allowing two hits and three unearned runs, and earning one strikeout.
Following the very busy weekend the Broncos are 5-3 on the season and are second in the 2A East Region behind a 2-0 Monticello squad. The two rivals faced each other on Tuesday, March 18 in a game played after the San Juan Record print deadline.
San Juan is off this weekend and won’t hit the diamond again until Wednesday, March 26 when they travel to Salina for a 2A East doubleheader against the North Sevier Wolves.