Glenwood pulls off rare baseball sweep of HCHS
HARLAN (June 13) -- For the Harlan Community baseball team, Thursday night at Jim Goeser Field was a five-and-a-half hour process of one step forward and two steps back.
Hosting Glenwood for a varsity doubleheader, the fourth-ranked (3A) Cyclones held the lead for all of about 10 minutes, losing to the Rams 7-4 and 12-11 in eight innings on a night in which all phases of their game - hitting, pitching, defense and base running - were suspect at one time or another.
Glenwood (7-4 overall, 5-3 Hawkeye Ten) came up with big hits when it needed them throughout the twin bill, leading wire-to-wire in game one and responding to Harlan’s seven-run fifth in the night cap with a six-run sixth to tie the score. Eli Bales’ sacrifice fly drove home the winning run in the top of the eighth and reliever Cade Van Ness earned the win with three dominant innings on the mound.
HCHS was outhit 11-5 in game one and 15-14 in game two. The Cyclones committed four fewer errors than the Rams overall but struck out 23 total times and stranded 19 runners. They finished the week at 12-3 overall and 10-3 in conference play, good for third place behind Lewis Central and Denison.
“We were kind of behind the 8-ball when we started as far as our pitching staff and the number of guys we had available,” said HCHS coach Steve Daeges after the Cyclones’ first week with five varsity games.
“I just knew going into these two ball games that we were going to have to score a lot of runs. I didn’t think it was anything as far as effort tonight. I thought we played hard and did some [good] things. It just seemed like anything and everything that could go wrong seemed to go wrong."
Glenwood 7, HCHS 4
The Rams took a 4-0 lead after an inning and a half and were able to hold off the Cyclones the rest of the way in game one.
HCHS tried to get back in the game, cutting the margin to 5-3 on Connor Bruck’s two-run double off Colton Schutte in the fourth inning. The Rams, though, would score two insurance runs in the seventh, capped by Logan Strong’s RBI double, and the Cyclones could only get one back in the bottom of the inning on a pinch-hit RBI single by Trey Gross.
At the plate for the Cyclones, Bruck went 2-for-3 and Brett Sears had a triple and walked twice.
Glenwood 12, HCHS 11 (8)
In a wild game two, the Cyclones rallied to tie the score at 2-2, 3-3 and 4-4 in the early innings before erupting for seven runs in the fifth off Ram reliever Chad Fisher. Derec Weyer, Bruck and Isaiah Ahrenholtz all hit RBI doubles during the outburst and Moser had an RBI single.
The Cyclones’ 11-5 lead was short-lived, however, as Glenwood answered right back with six runs in the sixth off HCHS relievers Alex Monson and Luke Schaben.
It would stay tied until the eighth, when Andrew Holiday’s one-out single and Radford’s double set the stage for Bales’ sac fly.
Sears went 4-for-5 with his second triple of the night to lead the Cyclone offense while Moser, Bruck and Ahrenholtz all had two-hit games and Luke Schaben added an RBI double, drew two walks and scored three runs.