Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

NORTH LIBERTY – Just as it did for most of the season Regina played a lot of good baseball on Tuesday.

The Regals ran into a Cascade team that played even better.

Sophomore Jackson Green tossed a two-hit shutout and Cascade played errorless defense behind him in a 4-0 win over eighth-ranked Regina in a Class 2A, Substate 3 quarterfinal at Liberty High Field in North Liberty.

“We played good baseball, they played a little bit better,” Regina coach Mark Roering said. “They made some plays at the right times, they did some good defensive stuff and hats off to them.”

Green struck out six and got timely defensive help to escape jams in the second and fourth innings as Cascade improved to 21-12 on the season.

Cascade will play at Denver (19-7) on Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Substate 3 semifinals.

Denver defeated Alburnett 2-1 in the first game of a Substate 3 doubleheader at Liberty on Tuesday.

Regina got its own strong outing from sophomore Will Litton who struck out seven and allowed four runs, two earned, on six hits in five innings.

It was a four-run Cascade sixth inning that accounted for all the scoring on Tuesday as Regina closed the season 22-6.

“It’s baseball, I would rather lose that way than playing like total dogs,” Roering said. “It’s the ones that we don’t play when I lose sleep. You just have to tip your cap and move forward.”

Green and Litton both cruised through five innings unscathed.

Cascade turned a 6-4-3 double play to help Green escape a bases loaded, one-out jam in the second inning.

Cougar second baseman Mick Hoffman snagged a one-hop ground ball and got a force out at second base in the fourth inning and Green struck out Regina senior Jenson Berg to end the inning and strand two Regals on base.

The only offense of the game came from the Cougars in the sixth.

Hoffman and Nathan Schockemoehl led off the inning with singles and Cooper Hummel followed with an RBI single to get Cascade on the board.

The Cougars added three more runs on an RBI single by Eli Fritz a passed ball and a Regina fielding error.

“We had one rough inning there,” Roering said. “They put some pressure on us with the bunt game and I thought we did a good job limiting that inning to four. It could have gotten really out of control.”

That was enough support for Green as the sophomore right-hander retired the final 10 batters he faced.

Green allowed a single to Berg in the second, a one-out single to Trey Streb and walked three but that was it.

The loss ended an impressive season for Regina which won 20 games in a season for the first time since 2018.

“The seniors that we had this year were absolutely awesome,” Roering said. “They bought in, I thought we learned how to play really good baseball and play it the right way that gives us chances to win.”

Regina started five sophomores in Tuesday’s substate game including Litton, catcher Tate Wallace and infielders Carter Carolan and Jack Gavin.

“We had six sophomore starters pretty much every game so there is a lot in the cupboard coming back,” Roering said. “The future is bright.”

Cascade          000  004  0  –  4  8  0 

Regina            000  000  0  –  0  2  2

W – Jackson Green                 L – Will Litton

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