Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

NORTH LIBERTY – Substate openers for Class 4A baseball teams are less than two weeks away.

With the postseason quickly approaching Liberty High continues to round into playoff form.

Liberty High claimed its second consecutive doubleheader sweep and won for the sixth time in seven games with a pair of wins over Waterloo East (4-34, 0-22) on Monday in a Mississippi Valley Conference cross-divisional doubleheader in North Liberty.

The Lightning won the opener 10-0 in five innings and took the nightcap 17-2 in four innings while improving to 20-11 and 17-9 in MVC play.

“We are pitching well and our fielding has gotten a lot better,” Liberty High senior Cody Schroeder said. “We lost a lot of good bats from last year but we have a lot of juniors stepping up and everyone on our bench is hungry to play and when they get the chance they make plays. We have a lot of depth this year.”

After posting a pair of one-run wins over Cedar Rapids Jefferson on Friday the Lightning made things considerably less stressful on Monday.

Liberty High hammered 22 hits in the doubleheader, scoring double digit runs for the third time in the past six games and posting double digit runs in both games of a doubleheader for the first time this season.

The Lightning scored runs in six of seven innings on Monday and had four innings of four runs or more.

“Going all the way back to last Monday against Dubuque Senior I didn’t think our approach at the plate was very good, against (Dubuque) Wahlert the first game we were good the second game not as much and Friday we started to put it together,” Liberty High coach Tom Cronk said. “Tonight, they really did a good job. They are buying in to what we are trying to do.”

In the opener three Liberty High pitchers combined on a one-hit shutout with starter Boyd Skelley striking out eight in three dominant innings to earn the win.

Six Liberty High pitchers combined to walk eight and strike out 17 in the double header and the Lightning played errorless defense.

“The two things we are talking about more than anything are throwing strikes and planning good defense,” Cronk said. “Again, tonight we had no errors. That’s what got us in trouble early in the year is not only would we make an error but we would make an error and then we’d make another error and that is where we were giving up gobs of runs.”

Waterloo East took advantage of a pair of first-inning walks to take a 2-0 lead in the nightcap after an RBI double by Justin Thomas.

Liberty High responded with 17 unanswered runs over the next three innings.

Brody Fishman, who went 6-for-6 on the evening, led off the Liberty High first inning with a triple to right center field and scored on a Keian Secrist sacrifice fly.

TJ Kimm added an RBI single in the first inning as Liberty High tied the score at 2-2.

“We put balls in play,” Kimm said. “Last year we struggled with that a lot and we had a lot of strikeouts this year we are making the defense work.”

Liberty High broke the game open in the second, sending 12 batters to the plate in a seven-run outburst.

Fishman had two hits in the inning, scoring one run and driving in another and Luke Meyers had a double and an RBI single in the onslaught.

Liberty High tacked on eight more runs in the third, sending 13 batters to the plate and getting hits from six different players.

In all, Ten different Liberty High players had a hit in game two.

“Against Jefferson we struggled a lot but I think tonight we were better at adjusting,” Schroeder said. “Our coaches kept telling us to adjust and we finally did.”

Liberty High travels to Regina on Wednesday and closes out MVC play by hosting West High in a doubleheader on Thursday.

The Lightning are opposite second-ranked Pleasant Valley in Class 4A, Substate 4 which opens play July 19.

“If we can limit the damage defensively our guys have enough stuff that if we are throwing strikes and playing good defense we are going to be in every game,” Liberty High coach Tom Cronk said. “We’ve got a tough substate no doubt about it but if we play clean we can beat anybody.”

Game 1

Waterloo East                       000  00  –   0   1  3

Liberty High                          140  5x  –  10  7  0

W – Boyd Skelley                   L – Justin Thomas

Game 2

Waterloo East                       200  0  –   2    1   1

Liberty High                          278  x  –  17  15  0

W – Noah Kirk                       L – Sam Mills

2B – ICL: Luke Meyers. WE: Justin Thomas

3B – ICL: Brody Fishman

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