The Mustangs achieved their goal of winning the league championship on Tuesday night, even though their split against Santa Fe Trail was far from pretty.
“Really a disappointing night for me,” Iola coach Mark Percy said despite the title. “I’m disappointed because we have a lot better baseball team than we showed tonight.
“I don’t know that we are an unbelievable team, but for one thing I think we are a lot better team than they are and it didn’t show tonight. We didn’t play good baseball and I don’t know why because we had a chance to win the league championship outright.”
Iola struggled to scratch across hits against a Santa Fe Trail team that has struggled in league play all season. Santa Fe Trail beat Iola 5-4 in 8 innings in game one of the doubleheader.
“We weren’t seeing anything special,” Iola junior Ethan Scheibmeir said. “We just weren’t hitting the ball like we normally do.”
As the Chargers were beating the Mustangs in game one, Wellsville was rallying to upend Prairie View and Iola knew in order to win the league, they couldn’t let another game slip away.
In game two, The Mustangs topped the Chargers 3-2 in dramatic fashion.
After using freshman pitcher Derek Bycroft to try and close the first game, Percy decided to use the young pitcher again to start game two. Bycroft has been one of the top pitchers in the Pioneer League all season and continued to demonstrate why the future is bright for the Mustangs on the mound.
“Our pitching wasn’t bad all night,” Percy said.
Santa Fe Trail managed to scratch out a run in the third inning to take a 1-0 lead and then another run in the sixth gave them a two-run advantage.
The Mustangs answered that run back in the home half of the sixth frame. Junior Coleson Wiggin led the inning off with a double. Wiggin scored on a fielder’s choice off the bat of Garrett Wade and the margin was cut in half.
That was all the Mustangs were able to get in the inning though and went into the final inning trailing 2-1 with their league championship hanging in the balance.
Bycroft pitched his eighth inning of the day and kept the Chargers off of the scoreboard, giving his offense a chance to make its rally.
“I was pitching for a lot of contact to try and get ground balls and outs,” Bycroft said. “I wanted to save my pitch count (throughout the game).”
The Chargers walked junior shortstop Ben Cooper to lead-off the inning and put the game-tying run on the base paths for the top of the order.
After the Chargers recorded an out, sophomore Isaac Vink came up with a double to put two of the fastest runners the Mustangs possess in scoring position with the middle of the lineup coming to the plate and just one out.
