Dolores Bears Crush Nucla 24-6 in Dominant Non-League Baseball Win

Five games into the 2026 season, the Dolores Bears had scored 28 total runs and lost every game. On Tuesday afternoon at Nucla, they scored 24 in one.

The Bears dismantled the Mustangs 24-6 in a non-league road game to snap a five-game losing skid and earn the program's first win of the year. The 18-run final margin announced something the Dolores lineup had been building toward all spring: a junior class that has grown up playing together and is now hitting its stride.

Junior Orin Samulski entered the game with a perfect 1.000 batting average and continued to punish opposing pitching in a contest that saw the Bears produce runs in waves. Levi Hampton, also a junior, leads the team with nine runs scored on the season and accounts for the squad's only home run. Gus Vaughn, who splits his time between second base and the pitching mound, has driven in seven runs in the early going. Declan Warren rounds out a four-player junior core, all of whom arrived at Dolores High as freshmen together under Coach Garver and have been the engine of the program's rebuild ever since.

The 24 runs scored Tuesday represented nearly half of what Dolores had produced in its entire season to that point. That kind of offensive output in a single game signals lineup depth, not a hot streak from one bat: when four juniors are all contributing, a game at Nucla can turn into a blowout by the middle innings.

The win carries weight beyond the final score. Dolores sits 0-0 in 2A San Juan Basin League play, meaning the postseason race is entirely in front of them. Run differential factors into seeding, and an 18-run cushion on the road is exactly the kind of result that shows up favorably when district standings are calculated.

The next chance for Dolores fans to see this lineup at home is a 2:00 p.m. matchup against Monticello, with league play and a playoff push closing in fast.