The Barton Baseball Cougars went into their weekend series with the Colby Trojans needing two wins to clinch the regular season Jayhawk West regular season championship. They took care of that with a home sweep of the Trojans on Friday. Saturday they traveled to Colby to wrap up the series and split the double header to end the season with a record of 35-19 and a 24-8 conference mark.
Colby won game one 7-3 before the Cougars bounced back to win game two 6-5.
The Jayhawk West title was the program’s 10th overall and first since 2018 when Barton reached the Junior College World Series for the first time in school history.
Now they begin their quest for another trip to Grand Junction as they begin the Region VI playoffs at home Wednesday in game one of a best of three series against Labette with a 1:00 p.m. game at Lawson-Biggs Field. Game two will also be a 1:00 p.m. with game three if necessary starting at the same time Friday.
Labette finished 8th in the Jayhawk East and will come to Great Bend with a record of 16-24.
If the Cougars can take care of the Cardinals, they would advance to the NJCAA Plains District Tournament starting May, 17 at Kansas State’s Tointon Family Stadium.