The Iowa Falls-Alden and Hampton-Dumont-CAL baseball and softball team take their rivalry to the diamond in Hampton on Monday, and look for a fresh start to June after an up and down May.
The Iowa Falls-Alden baseball team will look to track down their first win of the season. The Cadets in last outing fell to Interstate 35 in a doubleheader, 4-1 and 10-1 on Saturday. Brody McNeal on the mound has 11 strikeouts and a 5.25 ERA in 9 ⅓ innings. Keaton Mulford leads at the plate with 3 RBI.
The HD-CAL baseball team at 2-8 has navigated a challenging schedule,and had an improved final week of May with their first two wins of the season against Clarion-Goldfield-Dows and Northwood-Kensett. Dawson Wikert on the hill has 20 strikeouts and a 6.26 ERA in 15 ⅔ innings. Cael Burmester has knocked in 8 RBI for the Bulldogs.
HD-CAL Head Coach Matt Lokenvitz says a benefit of facing tough opponents early on is quality pitching.
“Every game that we go into, we were seeing good pitching, which is the best thing for our kids,” says Lokenvitz. “We’re pretty inexperienced. We’ve graduated a lot of seniors over the last couple of years, and we’ve been pretty good the last couple of years. So the kids need to see good pitching, they need to get that experience and get those innings in. We could go and schedule, some teams that are not as good and then you’re not going to see good pitching. Then all of a sudden you get into the conference and you see really good pitching and you can struggle. We’ve seen good pitching the whole time. From seeing that good pitching all the way through in the early on, now all of a sudden, it’s just another pitcher, so that’s really helped us.”
The game will air on 104.9 KLMJ with pregame coverage at 5:20 p.m. followed by the first pitch at 5:30 p.m. in Hampton.
The 1-4 Iowa Falls-Alden softball team is led in the circle by Cidni Phipps with 28 strikeouts and a 4.33 ERA in 32 ⅓ innings. The 2-2 HD-CAL softball team has received quality innings from Aspen Harlan with 15 strikeouts and a 0.88 ERA in 16 innings.
First pitch is at 5:30 p.m.
