WELLSVILLE — Tuesday had a little bit of everything for Iola High’s baseball fans.
A stirring late-inning rally. Gutsy pitching. Lots of batters hit by pitches.
And two more Mustang wins.
Iola rallied for five runs over the final three innings of Tuesday’s opener to snare a stirring 8-7 come-from-behind victory, the decisive blow coming on Jarrett Herrmann’s solo home run in the top of the seventh.
The Mustangs then erased any semblance of drama in the finale, scoring nine runs over the first two innings of a 16-2 romp.
The victories come in the midst of a heated battle for the Pioneer league championship, which had Iola, Anderson County and Santa Fe Trail all within a game or two of each other entering the final week of the season.
Iola can secure at least a share of the crown if it handles business next week to wrap up the regular season with doubleheaders Tuesday against Santa Fe Trail and Wednesday against Osawatomie.
“We’re glad to get two wins. We’ve got to come ready to play next week,” Iola head coach Ryan Latta said. “It’s going to be tough. Our pitchers have got to be ready to go.”
Tuesday’s opener had plenty of drama, even though Mustang pitchers allowed only five hits in the seven innings.
That was because starter Nathan Louk and reliever Ryker Curry combined to hit seven Eagles batters. Iola also committed four errors in the contest.
“To get a win out of that doesn’t happen a lot,” Latta noted.
Some timely hitting sure helped Iola’s cause.
Curry walked to lead off the game and scored on Bradyn Cole’s single. Dillon Bycroft then smacked a 2-1 pitch over the center field fence for a 3-0 lead.
A pair of Wellsville singles sandwiched around a hit batter cut Iola’s lead to 3-1.
The Eagles then took full advantage of another hit batsman to lead off the bottom of the second. A dropped third strike prevented what would have been the second out, and a fielding error led to a pair of Wellsville runs to knot the score at 3-3.
Another hit batsman set the stage for Wellsville’s Jackson Showalter, who blasted a three-run home run for a 6-3 Eagles lead. A two-out RBI double by Wellsville’s Benito Delgado pushed the advantage to 7-3 after four.
But back-to-back Eagle errors to start the fifth allowed Curry and Louk to score, the latter coming home on Brandon McKarnin’s sacrifice fly, slicing the deficit to 7-5.
