The Aplington-Parkersburg baseball team scored their most runs in a game this season and defeated Nashua-Plainfield 11-1 in five innings at home Tuesday. It was also the team’s first game of the season that ended early due to the runs-ahead rule.
Senior Cooper Hoff says the offense is heating up with several key contributors.
“We’ve got some young guys and maybe we were just kind of getting used to it at the beginning of the season,” Hoff says. “But I think we were really putting it into play at the beginning of the season. We weren’t really striking out a whole lot. We were putting in play and it just didn’t go our way and that happens sometimes. So now some balls are kind of going our way, they’re dropping and it’s really nice to see.”
In the first inning, the Falcons scored six runs, including RBIs by Jaxson Kleespies and Nick Neuroth. Nashua-Plainfield scored on a bases-loaded walk in the second, followed by a scoreless third inning. In the fourth, Preston Janssen and Kleespies each drove in runs, Gabe Jacobson was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, and Devin Davis scored on a wild pitch. The Falcons held the Huskies off the board in the top of the fifth to finish the win. Head Coach Brett Kleespies.
“We’ve had a few games that way and we just haven’t been able to cross the hump, and tonight we just challenged them before the game even, just to kind of keep the gas pedal down,” Kleespies says. “We like to get out but then we just kind of stall out and it’s usually a 3-0 and then we don’t score the rest of the game. So we just kind of challenged them to go at it. The bottom of the order had some good hits tonight in key situations. We kind of had a couple guys hit the opposite way and score some guys and hard hit balls tonight. So it was good to see just a little confidence hopefully going into tomorrow.”
Neuroth, Jacobson and Kleespies each had two hits. Kleespies had four RBIs and Jacobson had three. Hoff was the winning pitcher with four strikeouts, no walks and one hit in 3.1 innings. AP (10-5, 5-4 NICL-C) will be at East Marshall Wednesday at 7:00 p.m.
Cooper Hoff interview:
Brett Kleespies interview:
The Falcon softball team (6-8, 4-5 NICL-C) will also be at #12 (2A) East Marshall. AP has had nearly a week off, and enters with the momentum of winning four of their last five games. In their last outing, they won 3-2 at Waterloo Columbus Thursday.
East Marshall (19-3, 6-0 NICL-W) has won five straight, including Monday’s 12-0, four-inning win over Union. They have the top four batters in the NICL-West, led by Peyton Grabenbauer and Morgan Neuroth at .425 and .420. Neuroth also boasts a 1.71 ERA as the pitcher. The game will air on 99 The Wave with pregame coverage at 4:50 p.m. and the first pitch at 5:00.
