The 2016 Hartem seniors are from left to right: Colton Johner, Doug Phillips, Clay Olson and Wyatt Conrady.

Toppers hand Stags a loss on Senior Night

[May 14, 2016]  The Toppers struck first against Hartem senior Clay Olson with RBI singles by freshmen Logan DeRight and Ben Fricke in the first inning to give Mount Pulaski a 2-0 lead. In the bottom of the first with Huff on the mound for Mount Pulaski, Olson tagged him for a deep fly to centerfield that just hit off the glove of Jon Shehorn and allowed Olson to travel all the way to second base. Olson took third on a wild pitch by Huff and then scored on a groundout to short by Alec Hayes.

With the Toppers leading 2-1 going into the second inning, Olson found himself in a little jam quickly. The senior walked the first two batters, Sam Koehl and Eli Olson, before Shehorn laid down a perfect bunt and the speedy freshman beat it out at first base rather easily. With the bases loaded Farris stepped to the plate and sent the second pitch flying over the right field fence.

Huff and company quickly cruised through the next five innings scoreless as Mount Pulaski maintained a 6-1 lead and Huff had a no-hitter going.

In the top of the sixth inning the Toppers added to the lead on a sacrifice fly by Eli Griesheim that made the score 7-1. The Stags would add RBI singles by Justin Cannon and Brode Baker to make the final score 7-3.

The game would end with Fricke throwing out a baserunner trying to steal third. Impressive arm on the freshman catcher.

Mount Pulaski’s record is 4-20 while Hartem sits winless at 0-20.
 

Tanner Farris (left) smacked a grand slam and senior Brett Huff (right) pitched a near gem to lead Mount Pulaski over Hartsburg-Emden 7-3 on the diamond Friday afternoon.  Huff took a no-hitter into the seventh inning before allowing two runs, yet still went the distance striking out 14 batters

Following the game, Mount Pulaski Coach Joel Washko made note of the improvement of his young team. “When you are starting five freshmen, no team is going to be where they want to be on day one. So the key is, I think, to just keep getting better everyday. Now we are heading into regionals and you just want to be playing your best baseball. We are playing better than we have. The last two to three weeks we’ve played good baseball for us. We are making routine plays, putting the ball in play, the pitchers are throwing strikes. So that’s where you want to be going into postseason. How far you go, you can’t really worry about that. You just hope you are playing your best. I think we have put ourselves in a position to be playing our best baseball going into post season.”

That postseason begins Monday for the Toppers at the Arthur-Lovington-Atwood-Hammond regional.

[Teena Lowery]