Tigerhawks fall in postseason opener to Lions

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COLFAX — Colfax-Mingo’s baseball team waited nearly 90 minutes to take the field in their postseason opener.

After Bondurant-Farrar and Pleasantville went 11 innings in the first game at Colfax-Mingo High School, the host Tigerhawks finally got their chance. But in a game that ended at around 11 p.m., it was Des Moines Christian that held on for an 8-6 victory Saturday night in a Class 2A district quarterfinal.

Colfax-Mingo outhit the Lions 8-5, but it was four errors and eight runners left on base that did in the Tigerhawks.

“In games we have won, we’ve picked some guys up throughout the game that were on base,” Colfax-Mingo coach Jeff Lindsay said. “But tonight, we hit the ball hard and with baserunners on, it just happened to be right at people. If the ball is just to the either side of the fielder, the result is probably different.”

But the Tigerhawks were finding the gaps early.

Down 1-0, Colfax-Mingo came back in the second inning. Robbie Forschler reached on an error and after a Preston Wilson single, courtesy runner Austin Poulter came around to score on a Lucas Weston pop up that was dropped.

With two on, Alex Wolf plated Wilson and Lucas Weston on a single to take a 3-1 lead. But three of the next five batters struck out to end the inning with the bases loaded.

That proved to be costly as Des Moines Christian came back to take the lead in the fourth inning when the Lions got a two-RBI single from Alex Toulouse and an error on a pop up by Josh Arment plated two more runs.

The errors have been an unfortunate downfall this season.

“Defensively, that’s kind of hampered us all year — giving teams extra outs,” Lindsay said. “When we’ve done it, more times than not it’s come back and got us. You hate for something like that to occur during the postseason, but it’s part of the game and you got to deal with it and battle through it.”

The Lions added three more runs in the fifth inning with an RBI double by Luke Finley and a two-RBI single by Toulouse to build an 8-3 lead.

But Colfax-Mingo did make a rally in the bottom half of the fifth inning. Forschler and Wilson started off with back-to-back singles, and an error on Weston’s hit scored both runners.

Weston’s first three at-bats all resulted with him reaching on errors.

A Brandon Connelly pop out scored courtesy runner Poulter later in the inning, but that’s as close as Colfax-Mingo could get. The Tigerhawks got a runner on in each of the final two innings but couldn’t advance the runners into scoring position.

Des Moines Christian (18-9) will face Bondurant-Farrar Tuesday night in Colfax after the Bluejays got a three-run top of the 11th inning to beat Pleasantville by a 10-7 score in game one.

Colfax-Mingo ends its season with a record of 11-13, with the team having some nice highlights this season. The Tigerhawks swept Heart of Iowa Small School champion Woodward-Granger this season.

“We started hitting the ball really hard here at the end of the season, which I knew we were very capable of, but we have to get tougher as a whole group,” Lindsay said. “We got to work toward a little more team toughness next year.”

Colfax-Mingo loses just two seniors to graduation this year — Daft and Connelly.

“They’ll be missed,” Lindsay said. “They’ve been a part of this team for four years, and you couldn’t ask for two nicer young men. We’ll miss them and wish them well.”

Des Moines Christian 8,
Colfax-Mingo 6

R H E
DM Christian 100 430 0 — 8 5 4
Colfax-Mingo 030 030 0 — 6 8 3

DMC: Luke Finley 4K 4BB, Eric Frye 4K 0BB (5) and Josiah Gates. C-M: Michael Wilson 4K 5BB, Nolan Daft 4K 1BB (5) and Robbie Forschler. W — Finley. L — Wilson. 2B — DMC: Gates, Finley. Multiple hitters — DMC: Finley 2, Alex Toulouse 2. C-M: Preston Wilson 2. RBI — DMC: Toulouse 4, Finley 1, Gates 1. C-M: Alex Wolf 2, Brandon Connelly 1.