CONCORDIA — Iola took two more steps to a state baseball repeat.
The Post 15 Indians steamrolled Beloit, 13-3, Friday morning, to advance to the championship semifinals, set for Friday evening against Garnett in the double-elimination tournament.
Trey Sommer delivered the big blow, a bases-clearing double, that allowed Iola to break open what had been a 4-2 lead to 7-2. Kaiden Barnett and Jack White each added two hits in the win.
THE ROUT was a far cry from Thursday’s opening nailbiter, in which Sam Hull delivered in his fourth at bat against Colby, with an RBI double to claim a walk-off 6-5 win in the bottom of the seventh.
“That’s huge,” said Iola head coach Ethan Tavarez. “You always have to make the next play and that’s what he did. That’s what we’ve been telling these guys all year. We made some mistakes here and there and we moved on and Sam was a perfect example there. That wasn’t even our best hitting game.”
Trey Sommer started on the mound for Iola and went three innings after allowing a Colby run to score on a wild pitch in the top of the first for the 1-0 deficit. Sommer allowed only three base runners, two hits and a walk. Max Kersenbrock was the runner to cross home plate for the Sluggers.
Logan Page stepped in to pitch in the fourth. Page didn’t allow a hit and let up one run with four strikeouts through two frames.
Iola struck at the plate in the bottom of the fourth beginning with a Sommer RBI single to left field to knot the game at 1-1. Sommer came around to score on a wild pitch later in the fourth to put the Indians ahead, 2-1.
Jack White then singled to left field to plate two more runs and go ahead 4-1 in the fourth.
Sommer came through yet again for the Indians in the bottom of the fifth with an RBI single to left to take a 5-1 advantage. That’s when the momentum shifted at the plate.
Colby added two runs in the top of the sixth on a Talon Andreasan bases loaded walk to bring the deficit within 5-2. Kersenbrock then sent a sacrifice fly to right field to bring the Sluggers within a 5-3 margin.
The Sluggers attacked again in the seventh when Teigan Thummel doubled to left field to score a run and come within a 5-4 deficit. The next at bat saw Colby’s Brayden Foss send a sacrifice fly to right field to knot the game at 5-5.
“It’s the small things. If you can make the small play you’re going to win,” Tavarez said. “Just by not doing the small things, that leads to big time errors. So working on those things in practice is huge. It’s just things that we don’t normally think about in the field.”
Iola’s Brandon McKarnin and Kaiden Barnett pitched the final two innings and combined to give up three runs on one hit and four walks.
When Hull stepped to the plate with Sommer on second in the bottom of the seventh, he rocketed a double to left center field to score the game-winning run for the 6-5 victory.
