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Jeff Yoder

Your Prep Sports

It was a long wait for West Branch to get back to the district final, but that wait is over.

“It feels damn good,” coach Andy Lapel said.

The Bears broke a 3-3 tie with six runs in the third inning and went on to beat Regina 14-7 in a 2A district semifinal that lasted 2 hours and 37 minutes.

“It was a long game,” Lapel said. “It was a really long game. I think our guys got pretty dang tired out there and I know that they did too. We just fought.”

Regina cut the West Branch lead to 9-7 in the fourth inning on Cade Smith’s 2-RBI double, but the Bears had the answer in the fifth.

Matt Paulsen’s third hit of the day was a double to score Matt Whaley. Brady Lukavsky added an RBI single and Trey Eagle drove in two runs with a double to put West Branch up by six again.

Ted Bridges pitched three shutout innings in relief, allowing one hit and three walks. He struck out three.

Paulsen finished 3-5 with four RBI.

“We’ve never seen their pitcher before, but we timed him up well,” Paulsen said. “Once the bats started going it was like everyone got going.”

“Hitting is contagious for sure. Once we get a few going, the energy in the dugout is just off the roof.”

The Bears finished with 13 hits, five walks, and did not strike out once.

 “We knew that our bats were probably going to keep us in this game and they did,” Lapel said.

“That umpire had a very consistent zone, but it was just a little smaller than were used to. Our guys fought, we kept good attitudes and we fought all the way through for the win.”

After losing an early 3-0 advantage, West Branch took the lead for good in the third as six consecutive batters reached base to lead off the inning. Ted Bridges drew a bases loaded walk followed by RBI singles from Gavin Hierseman and Whaley.

Hierseman finished the day 3-4 at the plate.

“I have the utmost confidence in anybody that steps up to the plate,” Lapel said.

“Our eight-hitter Gavin Hierseman is a sophomore and he has struggled a little bit with the bat pretty much throughout the season. “We changed a couple of things with him and he had three hits today and he was big for us. He’s a spark plug for us. When he gets going, our guys get going. It’s nice to see everybody stroking the ball.”

The Bears’ patient approach at the plate paid off against Regina starter Chase Becker, who was limited to 60 pitches because of some arm tightness.

“He throws hard, and we knew coming into this game that he’s going to throw hard and have a good hook and we wanted to just have good, quality at bats against him and work him a lot,” Lapel said. “We’re very aggressive, as you know, at the plate usually and we wanted to change that just a little bit and really make him work.”

Regina bounced back twice, but couldn’t keep pace with West Branch

“Our problem was, we didn’t get the lead and hold it,” Regals coach Todd Becker said. “We kicked the ball around like we typically did all year long and buried ourselves in a hole.”

Smith finished 1-3 with three RBI for Regina and Chase Becker drove in two runs for the Regals, who had the answer to an early deficit twice.

“We swing the bats well enough to do that with our approaches,” Becker said. “I was very happy that the guys battled. We’ve had times throughout this year when we haven’t done that.”

“It’s something to build on for next year. We’ve talked about that going through with our kids. We were young, very inexperienced… so I think we’re hopefully going to respond and be a little more mature next year.”

Regina finishes with a record of 10-22. West Branch (18-7) moves on to face Mid-Prairie, who defeated West Liberty 11-1 in six innings on Tuesday night.

West Branch  126  041  x  –  14  13  0

Regina              003  400  0  –   7    7   4

W – Matt Paulsen           L – Chase Becker

2B – WB: Trey Eagle, Matt Paulsen. ICR: Caden Smith, Paul Keller

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