Cyclones drop road match to Titans
Wednesday, the HCHS varsity baseball team went on the road to battle the Lewis Central Titans, hoping to extend their win streak to four games, but were unsuccessful dropping the contest 14-4.
The damage occurred when the Titans dropped nine runs in the bottom of the 4th and three runs in the bottom of the 5th.
“There were some things we couldn’t control necessarily,” said Cyclones Head Coach Heath Stein. “They’re a good ball club. If you give them some things, they’re going to make you pay for it, but overall I’m not disappointed in our effort.”
Stephen Leinen got the ball to start the night for the Cyclones going three innings, throwing 73 pitches, striking out one, but allowing seven runs on seven hits.
Cael Goshorn later came in to pitch going two innings, giving up seven runs on two hits, striking out one.
The Cyclones offense struggled, producing just three hits, but Stein was still proud of the efforts.
“I thought they had good swings and good approaches all night,” he said. “We had some guys on base that we left out there, but overall I’m not disappointed with the effort.”
The Cyclones will get another opportunity to play the Titans at home June 20. Stein is looking forward to that game.
“It’s always a battle with them,” he added. “If nothing else, if we don’t take the W home, we learn some things about ourselves and some things about them and hopefully if we see them again during the regular season, we’re really prepared for them.”
Cyclones get redemption on Monarchs
24 hours after dropping their game to the Lewis Central Titans, the HCHS varsity baseball team went to Denison to battle the Monarchs and won, 14-11.
“We got out of the gate and scored a bunch of runs early on which was really nice,” said Cyclones Head Coach Heath Stein. “The pitching struggled a little again, but the guys battled, they showed their toughness to grind out the win.”
The Cyclones got out to a 4-0 start and then added another four runs in the top of the 3rd inning. Multiple Cyclones stepped up on offense including Cade Sears, Brett Heese and Matthew Sorfonden who had multi-hit games. Sears and Sorfonden knocked in three runs each.
“Everybody gave us competitive at bats,” Stein said. “Everybody is a threat to hit a ball hard and hit a ball in the gap and they’ve been doing a nice job and they’ll keep getting better.”
The Cyclones used three pitchers including Weston Reisz, Jozef Reisz and Quinn Koesters. Weston pitched two innings, struck out three and gave up seven runs on two hits. Jozef pitched 2 1/3 innings allowing four runs on three hits, but struck out three. Koesters had the most consistent outing with 2 2/3 innings pitched, striking out four batters with just one hit allowed.
“All three guys competed their butts off,” Stein added. “There’s things you can’t control and they battled through it and Quinn did a nice job to close it.”
The Cyclones head to Kuemper Catholic Monday to take on the 7-3 Knights. The Knights are led by Logan Sibenaller with nine hits and Trevor Rial with seven runs batted in. On the mound, Sibenaller has three wins with 23 strikeouts.
“Kuemper is always tough,” Stein said. “They’re always a quality team and well coached. They’re always solid on the mound and scrappy at the dish and we’re looking forward to it.”