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Seniors quench thirst at Kearney
MNB Night
at ballpark
Thursday
KEARNEY -- When the McCook National Bank American Legion Seniors crossed the chalk lines, it was not surprising to see another Class A baseball club.
The Seniors have squared off with Class A teams for over half of their games, and Tuesday night's matchup with Kearney Thirsty's was no different.
The MNB Seniors swept a pair of games at Memorial Field 8-1 and 9-3.
In the opener, MNB started off quickly by scoring five runs in the first four innings.
They rapped out seven hits and also drew eight walks.
Their run production slowed during the middle innings, but the Seniors poured on three runs in the final inning to seal the win.
"We just have to maintain our focus. It is kind of easy to expect to score more runs after we put up four or five runs in the first few innings. The runs will not just fall in our lap, we have to keep on working hard," Seniors coach Justin Wacker said.
MNB doubled its fun Tuesday as they recorded a season-high four doubles in the first game.
Jared Muehlenkamp landed on second base twice, as Allan Shiers and Brad Potthoff found the outfield gaps once.
Muehlenkamp had his second win of the season on the mound for the American Legion Seniors.
Muehlenkamp struck out six, while only allowing one run on three hits.
"Jared had a great performance on the mound for us. He kept the hitters off balance all game and only gave up about three or four hard hit balls," Wacker said.
In the field, the defense backed up Muehlenkamp by making the majority of the routine plays that came their way.
"I can't think of anything that hurt us too badly. If we did make an error, we made another play right behind it, which was really good to see," Wacker said.
MNB played another clean ball game under the lights coming away with a six run victory.
Evan Koetter was the starting pitcher and threw three complete innings. Koetter struck out five and only walked two during his time on the hill.
"Evan threw good for three innings. His pitch count was starting to get high, so I pulled him and brought in Alex. I just want Evan to be ready to throw on Saturday during the Crete Tournament," Wacker said.
Alex Sughroue threw the remaining four innings to finish off MNB's undefeated night.
Kearney scored three runs in the sixth inning, but Sughroue put Kearney's streak to a halt for the final inning of play.
"Alex threw great by getting ahead of the hitters. They started to hit him around a little bit, but we had a big enough lead that it wasn't going to hurt us," Wacker said.
According to Wacker, he felt like the team focused at the plate much better during the second game than the first.
Newcomer Jayce Dueland also got his first hit of the season in Game 2.
"We maintained our focus at the dish throughout the whole second game. We got up early again, and we didn't let up. The seven runs we scored in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings really did some damage. We kept on getting timely hits when we needed them," he said.
The American Legion Seniors played solid defense during the majority of the game, but had a little too much breathing room down the stretch.
"We started the game off good, but then we started to relax in the later innings and didn't maintain our focus. This will come back and haunt us if we keep on doing this throughout the season, so we will have to sure that up," Wacker said.
Thursday night will be "MNB Night" as the McCook National Bank American Legion Seniors host Holdrege at 8 p.m.
The Seniors will be facing another district opponent and have an opportunity to extend their winning streak to four games.
"This will be a big game for us because we are playing a district opponent. Allan Shiers is going to throw for us, and we just need to play good defense behind him and hit when the situation is right," Wacker said.
GAME 1
McCook 101 3003 -- 8 7 2
Kearney 000 010 0 -- 1 3 3
1B- McCook: Jared Muehlenkamp, Evan Koetter, Allan Shiers.
Kearney: Jake Svacina, John Anderson, Derek Horsley.
2B- McCook: Muehlenkamp (2), Shiers, Potthoff.
GAME 2
McCook 200 313 0 -- 9 11 3
Kearney 000 003 0 -- 3 10 3
1B- McCook: Mark Rogers, Mason Pohl (2), Allan Shiers, Evan Koetter (2), Brad Potthoff, Alex Sughroue, Jayce Dueland, Brandon Kotschwar (2).
Kearney: Jake Svacina, Tyler Pratt, Logan Wittaker (2), Shane Darnall, Spencer Schubert, Shane Zinnerman, Jordan Seavers.
2B- Kearney: Svacina, Schubert.