Pitching, defense do in Mustangs in opener

CHANUTE — Take away a pair of nightmarish fourth innings, and Iola High’s baseball team might have been a bit more successful on the diamond Thursday.
But host Chanute scored seven fourth-inning runs in the opener, a 12-4 victory, and eight more in the nightcap in an 18-13 win.
The losses mark the first regular-season baseball defeats for Iola since the 2012 season.
But the heart of last year’s state runner-up squad has moved on to college, leaving the Mustangs with a barrel full of newcomers.
Nine, in fact, played in their first ever varsity games.
“We’re young and inexperienced,” Mustang head coach Mark Percy said. “And we look like it.”
Nowhere was that as evident than on the mound.
Mustang pitchers surrendered a combined 30 hits and 17 walks. The defense also had a rough go of it, committing six errors on the day, five alone in the nightcap.
“I’m disappointed we lost, but we’re going to get better,” Percy said. “We’re still trying to figure out what pieces we have and where they will fit.
“We’re going to have to work at it,” he said. “You’re not going to win playing like this.”
One of Iola’s returning veterans, senior Derrick Weir, staked Iola to a 1-0 lead when he blasted a laser over the right field fence in the first inning of the first game.
But Chanute took the lead for good with two in the bottom of the second.
Iola missed out on a key third-inning threat after Caleb Alexander singled and Ethan Scheibmeir walked with nobody out. But Blue Comet hurler Jordan Richards retired the next three in order, two on strikeouts and the other on a grounder back to the mound, to end the threat.
Richards aided his own cause with a bases-clearing triple, the key hit in Chanute’s seven-run fourth, to break the game open.
Iola cut the deficit to 9-4 in the fifth. Scheibmeir smacked a two-run single, scoring Brett Taylor and Alexander, but he was thrown out trying to advance to second on the throw home.
The out was costly. Drew Faulhaber, Weir and Ethan Sigg each followed with singles to score the third run of the inning before Coleson Wiggin’s line drive was snared by Chanute’s third baseman for the second out. A ground ball ended the threat.
Weir went 3-for-4 with a double and homer to lead the way. Scheibmeir, Faulhaber, Sigg, Peters and Alexander added singles.

IOLA ALSO took the lead early in the second game, 2-0, despite not hitting the ball out of the infield. Faulhaber walked and Weir reached on an infield single. Faulhaber and courtesy runner Caleb Alexander both scored on passed balls.
Chanute didn’t take long to respond. Christian Wilte’s leadoff triple in the bottom of the first cleared the way for a three-run inning.
The lead was 7-2 before Wiggin’s RBI single plated the Mustangs’ third run of the game in the top of the third.
Scheibmeir singled and scored on an error. Weir’s follow-up single scored Faulhaber to pull Iola to within 9-5.
But Chanute’s fourth-inning explosion put the game out of reach, although Iola didn’t go down quietly.
Thealvin Minor was hit by a pitch to open the fifth, moved to second on Sigg’s single and scored on an error. Scheibmeir’s two-run single cut the deficit to 17-8.
Trent Latta — held out for most of the day because of a lack of practice time — came on in relief in the bottom of the fifth to pitch, where he put the first, and only, scoreless inning on the board.
He then led off the sixth with a single, where he scored on Taylor’s single .
Iola’s last hurrah came in a four-run seventh.
Two walks and and an error brought Scheibmeir home to score. Another Blue Comet error brought home Faulhaber and Weir before Brice Aiello hit a sacrifice fly to score Minor. But the rally ended there when Sigg was tagged out trying to advance to third on the throw home.
Weir’s three hits paced Iola’s bat attack. Scheibmeir, Faulhaber and Taylor each singled twice. Wiggin, Latta, Minor and Sigg also singled.
Faulhaber took the loss, surrendering five hits and seven walks with three strikeouts. Scheibmeir gave up six hits and six walks while striking out four. Latta surrendered four hits and a walk with two strikeouts.