The Aplington-Parkersburg baseball and softball teams will host Waterloo Columbus in NICL-Central doubleheaders Tuesday. They’ll be the first varsity doubleheaders of the season.
The baseball team is 1-0, having defeated Denver 6-2 in last week’s season opener. The team produced 10 hits in 27 at-bats in a strong offensive outing. Head Coach Brett Kleespies on this year’s batting lineup.
“We’ve actually had, I think, almost nine of our guys this year play some sort of extra baseball, fall, spring, summer baseball after the year,” Kleespies says. “A lot of at bats and looking for big things this year. I think one through nine, we could probably switch the order up any way we wanted to and be successful. Being optimistic as a coach, you know, things happen in baseball, but I think truly one through nine, I think our guys could probably interchange and be just fine.”
Devin Davis was 3-of-4 with a double. Nick Neuroth, Cooper Hoff and Sully Janssen each had two hits. Davis pitched the complete game, recording 15 strikeouts and four walks.
Last year’s conference champion, the Sailors got an early start to their season and are 1-5. In their most recent outings, they lost to both Bishop Garrigan and Iowa City Regina at a home tournament Saturday. Kleespies says it’ll be a heavy conference schedule to begin the season.
“It’ll be tough right out of the gate with conference opponents, with Columbus winning the conference last year and then Dike-New Hartford. I have big expectations for this year. I think we have some some good goals and our goals are always to be playing mid-July, but you have to kind of start first and get there.”
One of the teams will earn their first win of the season in Game 1 of the softball doubleheader. The Falcons are 0-1, having fallen 10-0 in five innings at Wapsie Valley last week. They’ll look for a better offensive output after registering just two hits in that game.
Columbus is 0-3, and none of their games have gone past the fifth inning amid a tough strength of schedule. They fell 12-0 at home to #12 (2A) Jesup Friday, which followed losses to Dike-New Hartford and #8 (2A) East Marshall.
Both doubleheaders will begin at 5:00 p.m.
