LENEXA — According to Iola 8-and-under assistant coach Jeff White the team was “a little down” coming into the state tournament last weekend in Lenexa. They certainly didn’t end the weekend that way.
After losing three times the weekend before in Lamar, Mo., to teams they would be facing in the state tournament, the Mustangs were certainly longshots to run the table in Lenexa and emerge as state champions.
But that is exactly what they did.
“I’m really proud of these boys,” Iola coach Roland Weir said. “After they started winning, it just became contagious.”
They opened the weekend with two 10-run victories to open pool-play over teams from Topeka and Leavenworth on Friday, but just as they were building momentum, the rains came.
Saturday’s games were washed out and Iola would have to finish pool-play on Sunday, where the Pittsburg Saints were waiting for them.
The Saints had given the Mustangs two of their losses the weekend before..
Behind some stellar outfield defense, Iola emerged with a 8-5 win and rolled into bracket-play as the No. 2 seed.
“We moved Drake (Weir) from infield to outfield and it helped Henry (White), Lucas (Maier) and those guys, because they didn’t have to cover as much ground,” Roland Weir said. “With Drake having a big arm, we just moved a couple kids around and it just clicked. We didn’t miss a beat at all.”
The first game of bracket play got going bright and early at 8 a.m., and while Iola was still waking up, the Gardner Stars jumped all over them and built a 10-0 lead going into the third inning.
“We came out and struggled offensively and defensively,” Weir said.
Iola was not willing to have its tournament end that way however. They chipped away at the Gardner lead with runs in the third and fourth innings, before a seven-run outburst in the fifth inning gave them a 15-10 come-from-behind victory.
Again, the road didn’t get any easier as Pittsburg was waiting for the Mustangs in the next round.
This time Iola built a lead of its own by scoring seven runs in the first frame.
After pitching and defense controlled the game until the fifth inning, Pittsburg answered with a seven-run fifth to knot the game at seven.
Iola was able to scratch across a run in its half of the inning and shut Pittsburg down in the sixth to escape with a 8-7 win and punch its ticket to the semifinals.
There they faced the No. 1 team in the state, the Shawnee Bulldogs.
