Hawks win first round of Region 5C playoffs, drop second game to Red Wing

Posted 8/10/22

By Bruce Karnick [email protected] The Hastings Hawks started the Region 5C playoff tournament with an unexpected twist, as the games were postponed due to weather. The first game was expected …

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Hawks win first round of Region 5C playoffs, drop second game to Red Wing

Posted

By Bruce Karnick

[email protected]

The Hastings Hawks started the Region 5C playoff tournament with an unexpected twist, as the games were postponed due to weather. The first game was expected to take place on Saturday afternoon, but the rain moved it to Sunday afternoon. The first opponent was the Wannamingo Jacks.

With the extra rain from the weekend, the field was a bit soggy, slowing down play for both teams. Hastings came in as the six seed and Wannamingo as the third, so Hastings was the away team.

The Hawks started the game off with a Jordy Horsch walk followed by a Jackson Schaffer single that moved Horsch to second. Isaac Flynn hit into a fielder’s choice moving Horsch to third. Cole Benson hit a sac fly scoring Horsch and Cory Wolters hit a triple over the right fielder’s head to score Flynn giving Hastings the early 20 lead.

Wannamingo threatened to score in the bottom of the first with no one out and runners on first and third. A hardhit fly ball to right allowed the runner at third to tag, but a perfect throw in from Nick Horsch stopped the sacrifice fly from entering in the scorebook. Two strikeouts from Jordan Jeske on the mound, and the threat was ended.

The top of the second had a walk by Blake Warner and a solid single up the middle from Jake Sandquist. Nick Horsch took advantage of the damp grass and dropped a perfect bunt single to load the bases with no outs. Jordy Horsch hit a sacrifice fly and Schaffer grounded out with an RBI and Hastings had a 40 lead.

In the top of the fifth, Flynn and Benson walked to lead off the inning and Jackson Tessman had a sacrifice fly and Blake Warner hit an RBI single to give the Hawks the 60 lead.

Dennis Reinhart came in to relieve Jeske in the ninth knocking down the Jacks 1… 2…3.

Jeske pitched a great game with eight strong innings allowing three hits and one run while striking out 12. In the win, Jeske also earned the player of the game.

The firstround win meant that Hastings would be one more win away from making a state appearance, with the Red Wing Aces in the way. Red Wing took both games from Hastings during the regular season.

Red Wing started their ace against Hastings who kept the batters at bay to start the game. Red Wing scored two in the bottom of the first off Tommy Ritt, but the Hawks fought back with one in the second and one in the third to tie the game 22. The pitchers’ duel ensued until the bottom of the sixth when the Aces loaded the bases on Ritt, who was pulled after throwing 102 pitches. Dennis Reinhart relieved Ritt and allowed one run on a sacrifice fly with one out. Jordy Horsch made a laser throw from right to keep the second runner from scoring and logging the second out of the inning. Reinhart escaped with no additional runs, but the damage had been done, Red Wing took the 32 lead.

The next inning, two Hawks were hit by pitches. Sandquist took one to the knee and went down hard. Then right after, Nick Horsch took one to the ankle/foot. The Horsch injury is the scary one as he did not return to the lineup and was on his way to the emergency room for XRays to make sure the foot is not broken. With the two hit batters, Hastings was mounting a threat but could not capitalize, ultimately falling to Red Wing 32.

Hastings now must win two games to advance to state. The next game will be in Red Wing on Saturday against the Stewartville / Racine Sharks at 1 p.m. If they win, they will play again at 7 p.m. against the winner of Wannamingo vs Dodge County. Two wins and the Hawks go to state.

Isaac Flynn rounds third on his way to score on a Cole Benson double to left center. The RBI tied the game in the top of the third 2-2. Photo by Bruce Karnick