July 23, 2025

Free passes plague L-S baseball in quarterfinal loss

No. 3 Hawks end season with disappointing loss to East Buchanan

Gavin Fisk

CARROLL — The Lynnville-Sully baseball team won 106 games the past four seasons.

But what happened to the Class 1A No. 3 Hawks on Monday was something the senior class had only experienced two other times during those four summers.

Unfortunately for the defending champions, their worst game of the season, and maybe the past four years, came on the biggest stage as East Buchanan eliminated Lynnville-Sully, 12-1, in the 1A quarterfinals on Scott Parcher Field inside Merchants Park.

Ethan Dunsbergen

“Everything you could not want to have happen, happened,” Lynnville-Sully head baseball coach Scott Alberts said. “It was such a bad day for us all over the field. I can’t point to one thing we did well today.

“We didn’t pitch well. We didn’t play defense real well. We didn’t run the bases well. We didn’t hit very well. I feel bad for the kids.”

The troubles at the state baseball tournament started right away. East Buchanan scored four runs in the first inning and never trailed.

The Bucs out-hit the Hawks 9-5 and committed two of the game’s three errors.

“To be completely honest, I don’t know what happened,” L-S senior Lannon Montgomery said. “I’m more mad than anything because that was embarrassing.”

Lynnville-Sully answered East Buchanan’s four-run first inning with its only run of the game in the bottom half of the frame.

Carson Maston doubled with one out, and his courtesy runner, Ethan Dunsbergen, scored on Terran Gosselink’s RBI single.

Lannon Montgomery

But East Buchanan starting pitcher Will Hansen pitched into the sixth inning, struck out six and allowed just one earned run on five hits.

He was kept to fewer than 90 pitches so he can still pitch in a potential championship game on Friday.

That was the original plan for Maston, who made his 28th career start on the mound. But free bases plagued a trio of L-S pitchers as the Hawks walked 11 and hit two batters in the loss.

Maston (9-1) was the losing pitcher for the first time in his career. He started the game and pitched a total of 5 1/3 innings, allowing seven runs — five earned — on seven hits, seven walks and one hit batter.

Maston fanned six in the game and ended the season with 117 strikeouts in 61 1/3 innings.

“I was not good, and we just weren’t good together,” Maston said. “It was one thing after another that piled up.

“I couldn’t find my fastball, and they were sitting on my off speed. That didn’t always go well.”

Conner Deal

East Buchanan (18-9) led the Hawks 4-1 after one and tacked on six runs in the fourth and two more in the sixth to end the game early.

Maston was pulled after walking the lead-off hitter in the fourth. But neither Trace Carlson nor Gavin Olea could get out of the inning.

The Hawks’ ace was put back in but allowed a two-run double to the gap in left-center field before striking out back-to-back hitters to end the inning.

Carlson got one out but allowed four earned runs on two hits and two walks and Olea walked the only two guys he faced with the bases loaded.

Jack Bowlin struck out the only batter he faced in the sixth after Maston was forced out due to pitch count rules.

“(Bowlin) had been on the bases the entire inning before,” Alberts said. “We couldn’t warm him up properly. I would have put him in sooner, but I’m not sure any decision we made would have made a difference today.

“We can’t have walks. Those can hurt you in a big way. (Olea) didn’t get a chance to warm up a lot either. I had confidence in both guys. I can’t keep letting them walk guys though so I went back to (Maston), and he got us out of that inning.”

Trace Carlson

Hansen, a left-handed pitcher, got a 1-2-3 inning in the second but pitched around traffic on the bases all game.

JD Richards singled and Maston reached on an error in the third. Bowlin led off the fourth with an infield single and went to second on a wild pitch but was stranded after Hansen got back-to-back strikeouts and a ground out to end the inning.

Gavin Fisk reached on an error and Maston was hit by a pitch in the fifth and Montgomery singled and Olea was hit by a pitch in the sixth. The game ended with a ground ball to second base.

“There were just too many little mistakes that happened throughout the game, and we didn’t execute on offense either,” Montgomery said.

The Hawks (24-3) stranded seven base runners and their 6-7-8-9 hitters finished 0-for-10 with four strikeouts and one hit by pitch.

The loss came after top-ranked and top-seeded Remsen-St. Mary’s lost in the first game of the day to unranked Hillcrest Academy.

“I feel like we underestimated them,” Gosselink said about East Buchanan. ”We showed up as the No. 2 seed, saw Remsen lost and thought it was going to be easy. We didn’t play well enough to win.”

Terran Gosselink

The Bucs stranded 10 runners on base, but Keenan Pals finished with three hits, two runs, two walks and two RBIs, Tristan Cornell contributed two hits, two runs, one walk and one RBI and Nolan Peyton chipped in one hit, one run, two walks and two RBIs.

East Buchanan’s four-run first featured two hits and three walks. The Bucs scored six runs on three hits and five walks in the fourth and plated two runs on one hit, two walks and one error in the sixth.

“We did not do anything real well today,” Alberts said. “It was not a great display of Lynnville-Sully baseball.”

The loss ends the prep careers of Maston, Montgomery and Gosselink, who all will continue their athletic careers in college. Maston will join his brother, Conner Maston, at Morningside University, Montgomery will play baseball at Grand View University and Gosselink plans to play football at Ellsworth Community College.

“We graduate three seniors who are big players in our system,” Alberts said. “But we lost five big players last year. We have kids in the program who want to be back here and want to make a statement. I expect that they’ll do the work.”

Notes: The Hawks have five consecutive winning seasons. They only posted five winning campaigns in 11 seasons before that. “It’s a hard game. It’s an imperfect game,” Alberts said. “This game is so much like life. Life is going to kick us in the teeth every chance it gets. You have a choice in how you respond. Am I going to get up and work hard or am I going to just roll over? I hope they walk away and they fight and they learn how to work. If they take that away from this experience, we’ll be all right.” … Gosselink had a busy week as he spent most of his time at the Shrine Bowl and with the responsibilities that come with that. Gosselink played outside linebacker for the South squad. … No. 7 Martensdale-St. Marys defeated No. 9 Kee and No. 6 Saint Ansgar bested Logan-Magnolia in the other quarterfinal games. The 1A semifinals will be Hillcrest Academy versus Martensdale-St. Marys and East Buchanan against Saint Ansgar on Wednesday at Merchants Park in Carroll.

Carson Maston