Sports Editor
WILTON — For the second straight year and third time in the last five years, the Wilton baseball team sits one-game away from reaching the state tournament. Wilton claimed their fifth district title in the last ten years Saturday night, beating West Branch 3-0 at home. The Beavers will play fourth ranked Dyersville-Beckman Tuesday in Solon. The Beavers collected their sixth shutout in their last nine games and their 11th shutout this season in the victory.
“Defense and pitching is what we are built on. Obviously we have a great pitching staff. The guys are playing good behind our pitching. Coling threw a great game and we got some timely hits in the fifth inning to get some runs,” said Wilton coach Jake Souhrada.
District champs. Getting this next game is one of their goals. They put it down on their goal sheets at the beginning of the year. Hopefully, we’ll go and play relaxed. We were today, we had some fun this morning getting the tarp off the field and hanging out. They played loose and when the game was close, they had fun and played baseball,” he said.
Rain storms late Friday night across the area left a lot of water around the Wilton area, but Wilton has a tarp that they use, placed over the infield. That tarp did the trick, along with some minor work to the field, the playing conditions were as if rain didn’t happen less than 24 hours before the game.
The Beavers will play #4 Dyersville-Beckman on Tuesday night in Solon in a 2A substate game. The Blazers advanced, winning the district 7 title, 4-1 over RVC North foe Camanche. The two teams played for state trips in 2009 and 2014. The Blazers won two close games, 3-2 in 2009 in a game played in Cascade, and 5-2 in 2014 in a game played at Linn-Mar.
Wilton beat West Branch in both games of a doubleheader to begin the 2018 season, back in late May. The Beavers won by scores of 8-3 and 11-7. Saturday’s game was much closer. Wilton went with junior Colin McCrabb while West Branch went with sophomore Matt Paulsen.
Paulsen took the loss and had only one bad inning, the fifth. He pitched six strong innings and kept Wilton batters off balance for the first four innings of the game. He struck out five, walked three and gave up three runs on five hits. Paulsen saw his ERA swell to 1.20 for the season and his record drop to 4-3 in 46 2/3 innings.
Wilton stranded five runners on base through the first four innings. The Beavers advanced a runner to second base in the third and fourth innings and had a runner reach third base in the second innings.
Wilton broke through on the scoreboard in the fifth inning, scoring what would turn out to be the games only runs. The Beavers sent seven batters to the plate in the inning and scored three runs.
Cory Anderson led off the inning with a hard hit single down the left field line that he stretched into a double when the Bears left fielder didn’t get the ball back into the field fast enough. The hustle paid off later in the inning. Next, Collin McCrabb was hit by a pitch to give Wilton two baserunners to start the inning, and no outs. Jared Townsend then stepped in and sliced a double to left field, clearing the bases, scoring both Anderson and McCrabb for a 2-0 Wilton lead.
Paulsen induced a flyout by Tyler Hartman for the first out. Brock Hartley singled, sending Townsend to third. Hartley was courtesy ran for by Brian Stillman, to give Wilton two runners on with one out. While Chantz Steves was up, West Branch catcher Tanner Lukavsky, while trying to make a play to catch Stevens stealing second, committed a throwing error, allowing Townsend to come home with the game’s third run. That would be all the runs needed for Wilton to take the game, 3-0.
“When Cory gets on a lot of good things happen. He is a spark plug for us, and has a lot of energy. When he gets on base for us, we tend to score a lot of runs,” said Souhrada.
“We have hitters behind him to hit him in too and that’s what we did in the fifth,” he said.
The Beavers defense had a couple of hiccups in the game with bobbles on a couple batted balls, but two plays in particular were more the mode of operation for the Beavers in the game. In the top of the sixth, West Branch lead off batter Brady Lukavsky lifted a shallow blooper to right field. Beaver right fielder A.J. Bosten raced in, left his feet, dove, and came up with the ball before it hit the ground. The play was the first out in the inning, and the ensuing round of crowd applause carried over from the 3-run fifth for Wilton. Then, in the seventh, West Branch’s Trey Eagled reached on an one-out error. Pete Espensen then hit a grounder to Wilton shortstop Cory Anderson. Anderson flipped the ball to second baseman Tyler Hartman. Hartman stepped on second base for out two in the inning, and fired the ball to first baseman Jared Townsend for the third out to end the game.
Colin McCrabb won his 6th game of the season in pitching the complete game shutout. He improved to 6-1 and lowered his team best ERA to 0.65. He has 61 strikeouts to only six walks. McCrabb tossed seven innings of one-hit baseball in winning his fourth straight start, and third consecutive 1-hit shutout. He struck out four Bears and did not walk a batter. McCrabb retired the final ten batters in the game, often times getting ahead in the count.
“Everything was working really good tonight. They didn’t have a lot of hard contact tonight, but they did put the ball in play quite a bit,” said McCrabb.
“The defense did a good job of getting outs tonight. When you know you have a good defense it allows me to attack and stay around the strike zone. I don’t have to hope they chase something outside the zone and get a ball called,” he said.
Wilton had five hits in the game. Jared Townsend was 2-for-3 with a double and two RBI’s. Townsend’s hit was one of three in the Beavers 3-run fifth.
“We just want to get over the hump and get to state this year. Several Wilton teams have been at this point and not gotten there. We really want it,” said Townsend after the game. Townsend will take the ball against the Blazers Tuesday. He is 7-2 in nine starts with an ERA of 0.96 in 58 1/3 innings. He had 11 strikeouts to just 18 walks.
Cory Anderson had a double while Brock Hartley and Chantz Stevens each had singles.
It was a crazy night in class 2A across the state in district final games. Top ranked Cascade was upset 5-2 by Oelwein and second ranked West Lyon was upset by West Sioux 9-4. They join No. 6 Monticello and No. 8 New Hampton as top-10 2A teams that were upset before reaching the substate round. Iowa City Regina joined Wilton in the substate round after the third ranked Regals beat Eddyville-Blakesburg-Fremont 4-1 Saturday. The Regals will play Central Lee in the substate round, looking to make it two schools from the RVC to reach the 2018 state tournament.
Year-Record-Result
2017 - 26-7 = Lost in Substate to Iowa City Regina - 11-7
2016 - 29-4 = Lost to Iowa City Regina in second round - 2-0
2015 - 25-6 = Lost to Mediapolis in District Final 1-0
2014 - 26-7 = Lost to Dyersville-Beckman in Substate - 5-2
2013 - 28-10 = Lost to NE Goose Lake in District Final - 3-1
2012 - 22-10 = Lost to West Branch in District Final 2-1
2011 - 17-10 = Lost to West Liberty in first round 7-6
2010 - 24-7 = Lost to Davis Country in Substate - 10-2
2009 - 29-7 = Lost to Dyersville-Beckman in Substate 3-2
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