L-S baseball cruises past ACA, Colfax-Mingo

SULLY — The Lynnville-Sully baseball team began the season ranked No. 11 in Class 1A.

That’s a bit too low after the Hawks won the state championship last season and reached the state semifinals in 2023.

L-S head baseball coach Scott Alberts mentioned the rankings to the team before the season started, but the Hawks are in “one game at a time” mode right now, and a 6-0 start to the season pushed them up to No. 8 in the latest rankings.

“I don’t really care. I think it’s funny,” L-S senior Lannon Montgomery said about the rankings. “We lost a lot of people, and they recognize that. But so far we’ve played well.”

Four of the Hawks’ six wins have ended early, L-S won five of them by 10 or more runs and an 11-1 win over Ankeny Christian Academy capped a strong week on Saturday.

“I think we’ve played well when we needed to,” Alberts said. “Our schedule is going to keep building. This was a quality team. They lost seven starters from last year, but they’ll win a lot of ball games.

“We played really well today and (Maston) pitched really well today.”

Carson Maston improved to 3-0 on the mound after five strong innings. He fanned nine, allowed one hit and walked three in 76 pitches.

Maston has 33 strikeouts in 16 innings this season, but he was not happy with the trio of walks he issued to Eagle hitters.

“It was all right. I walked three today and got into too many 3-0 counts,” Maston said. “I just tried to get back into a groove, throw strikes and let my defense work.”

Lynnville-Sully (6-0) posted its fifth straight win over Ankeny Christian Academy. Saturday’s result was the highest run differential during that stretch.

But it took L-S a few innings to get on the scoreboard. The Hawks plated four in the third, four in the fourth and scored a combined three runs in the fifth and sixth to end the game early.

All four runs in the third were scored with two outs. Matthew Mintle walked with one out and then stole second.

Montgomery’s RBI triple made it 1-0 and then Maston walked in front of Terran Gosselink’s RBI single and Gavin Olea’s two-run single.

“We’re still trying to figure out combinations right now,” Alberts said. “We have a lot of really good baseball players. There are a lot of kids on this team who would start on a lot of teams around the state.

“It’s a really good team, and we can be picky about what we’re looking for. We’re making a lot of changes in the lineup and we’ll continue to do that until we can find the right combinations.”

Jack Bowlin opened the fourth with a walk and then stole second. Ethan Dunsbergen’s RBI triple pushed the lead to 5-0 and then Mintle’s RBI bunt single scored Dunsbergen from third.

Mintle stole second and took third on JD Richards’ bunt single. Mintle scored on a wild pitch and Richards stole second base before scoring on an obstruction call by the home plate umpire.

“We didn’t make very good batting adjustments early on but improved as the game went on,” Alberts said. “Batter to batter and pitch to pitch. We weren’t learning from one batter to the next early in the game.

“Once we started to understand his tendencies and made some adjustments, we had a lot better at-bats.”

Brody Borg led off the fifth with his second hit of the day. A single by Bowlin put two runners on base. Borg took third on a passed ball and then scored on a wild pitch to extend the margin to 9-0.

Ankeny Christian (3-3) scored its run in the sixth off Bowlin. The run was unearned as Tyler Davis single and moved around the bases on a pair of Hawk errors.

L-S ended the game after scoring twice in the sixth. Montgomery and Maston opened the frame with back-to-back walks. Olea and Borg also walked in the frame, but Montgomery and Maston went around the bases on multiple wild pitches.

Maston stranded a runner on first base in the first, second and fourth innings. His final inning produced two strikeouts and a double play.

Alberts said they were going to let Maston go until 90 pitches to keep him available for the Iowa Valley game this week but pulled him after 76 pitches and five innings.

“I was going to shut him off at 90,” Alberts said. “We got to 75 and that last inning was just OK. He told us he didn’t have command of his fastball and without it we were only throwing off-speed pitches.”

Montgomery led the Hawks with a triple, two runs, one RBI, two walks and one steal. His 11 total bases leads the team through six games.

Dunsbergen tripled, scored one run, had one RBI and walked once, Mintle had one hit, walked once, scored two runs, tallied one RBI and stole two bases and Gosselink posted one hit, one run, one RBI and one steal.

Maston tallied one hit, one run and two walks, Bowlin chipped in one hit, one run, one walk and one steal and Borg had two hits, one walk and one run.

Richards finished with one hit, one run and one steal, Olea had one hit, one walk and one RBI and Gavin Fisk scored one run and stole two bases.

Bowlin allowed one unearned run on two hits and one walk and struck out two in his only inning of work.

Davis led ACA with one hit and one run and Lucas Erickson pitched in one hit and one walk and he took the pitching loss.

Lynnville-Sully 16, Colfax-Mingo 0

SULLY — Trace Carlson and Olea combined to throw a four-inning no-hitter and the Hawks took advantage of nine Tigerhawk errors during a 16-0 home win over Colfax-Mingo on Friday.

Lynnville-Sully scored twice in the first two innings, plated eight in the third and then scored three in the fourth to end the South Iowa Cedar League game early.

Bowlin led the Hawks with two hits, three runs, two RBIs and one steal and he was hit by one pitch.

Maston tallied one hit, two runs, one RBI and two steals, Richards was hit by a pitch, scored two runs, had two RBIs and stole two bases and Montgomery posted one hit, one run, one RBI and one steal.

Gosselink, Olea, Borg, Mintle and Wyatt Mathis had the other hits. Gosselink added one run, one walk and one steal, Olea scored one run and had one RBI and was hit by one pitch and Borg tallied one run and one RBI.

Mathis scored one run and stole one base, Mintle drove in two runs, Connor Deal and Dunsbergen walked once and scored one run and Fisk scored one run and stole one base.

The Hawks (3-0 in the SICL) hit nine singles, stole nine bases, walked three times and was by three pitches.

Carlson (1-0) fanned six batters in his three innings and allowed no runs and no hits. It was his first career varsity pitching win.

Olea tossed the fourth inning and struck out three Tigerhawk batters.

“We’ve got more pitching depth this year than we had last year,” Alberts said. “If someone’s off one night, we have plenty of guys to go to. We can go to the next guy and be just fine on the mound.”