It only seems like Mother Nature has decided to make her presence known whenever Iola High’s baseball team takes the field.
“We’re kind of unlucky that way,” Mustang head coach Ryan Latta said. “It seems like all our varsity games run into rain or wind or cold.”
On Tuesday, Iola had to deal with all three.
But even an extensive rain delay in Game 1 of a doubleheader against Osawatomie did little to slow down the Mustangs, who rebounded from their first two losses of the season last week with a pair of blowouts, 22-2 and 10-0.
Keying the wins, as is usually the case, was Iola’s pitching and some key at bats with runners on base.
Iola’s Korbin Cloud tossed five innings of one-hit ball, while striking out a season-high 10 in the nightcap.
Meanwhile, the Mustang batters kept up a relentless offensive attack that kept pressure on Osawatomie from start to finish.
To wit, an error and walk paved the way for a 2-0 lead in the first inning before Jarrett Herrmann tripled in a run to make it 3-0 in the second.
Back-to-back Osawatomie errors set up a three-run Mustang rally in the fourth, capped by Drake DeLaTorre’s two-run double to make it 8-0.
Iola ended things in the bottom of the fifth. Carter Hutton hit a leadoff single before walks to TJ Taylor and Cloud loaded the bases for Herrmann, who lined a single back up the middle for the RBI. The game was called because the spread reached 10 runs.
Herrmann paced the offense with a single and triple with four RBIs, while Ryker Curry had a single and double, driving in two.
DeLaTorre had a double, Hutton singled twice. Cloud added a single as well.
AN EXTENDED rain delay only put off the inevitable after Iola scored 15 in the first inning and seven more in the second in support of Curry, whose night on the mound
ended once the rains started to fall.
Curry allowed three hits over two innings with two strikeouts. Brandon McKarnin came on in relief after the rain delay, striking out two in one inning of work.
Meanwhile, Iola’s batters took full advantage of six Osawatomie errors and 12 walks over two innings.
“We did a good job of putting pressure on them,” Latta said. “They helped us out a bit, and we had a couple of good hits with the bases loaded. That was huge.”
