Cyclones drop doubleheader to Stars at home
The HCHS boys baseball team opened their season at home Monday night against the Sioux City North Stars, dropping both games of a doubleheader 9-0 and 10-8.
“It was a little bit of a disappointing effort,” said Cyclones Head Coach Heath Stein. “In all aspects of the game, we didn’t throw the ball very well. We gave a lot of free bases on the mound and defensively, we gave them more free bases.”
The offense was quiet in game one with the Cyclones able to produce just one hit off the bat of Cade Sears. Defensively, Cael Goshorn was on the mound to start the game for the Cyclones pitching three innings, striking out two batters, walking three, and allowing two runs on two hits.
Brock Lemrick then took over pitching three innings, allowing seven runs on four hits, striking out two and walking two batters.
“We’re keeping guys on pitch counts early on, so we weren’t going to let anyone go too long,” Stein said. “We had them at about 55 pitches and nobody went over that.”
In game two, the Cyclone bats came alive, scoring eight runs, including dropping a 6-spot in the bottom of the 5th inning.
For the game, Sears had two hits while scoring two runs, Brett Heese had three hits, scored two runs and knocked in a run. Matthew Sorfonden, Jozef Reisz, Hayden Soma and Cael Goshorn also had hits.
“It was nice to see guys put better swings on balls,” Stein added. “Brett Heese hit three balls hard in that second game and a couple of other guys had more competitive at bats.”
Franz Reisz got the ball to start game two going the most innings of any Cyclones, pitching three innings, allowing three runs on two hits, striking out three and walking three batters.
The Stars dropped seven runs on the Cyclones in the top of the 4th inning which was the difference in the ballgame.
The Cyclones will be on the road Friday to take on the LeMars Bulldogs at 7 p.m. Last season, they finished 13-22 and were led by Ayden Hoag with 47 hits and 31 RBIs. In pitching, Hoag led the team in earned run average with 2.90 and had 73 strikeouts.
“LeMars is always solid,” Stein said. “Weston Reisz is going to start on the mound, so hopefully he has a good outing, even though he’ll be on a pitch count. Hopefully with 55 pitches he can get us through four or five innings by attacking hitters.”