Pat Harty

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Marcus Morgan had just walked the lead-off batter in the top of the seventh inning when he looked over and saw West High head coach Charlie Stumpff emerge from the dugout.

Morgan knew that his night on the mound probably was over and he was clearly frustrated because he wanted to finish what he had started against Liberty High School.

But his pitch count had climbed above 100 and his team was leading by five runs, so Stumpff decided that it was time to replace his talented sophomore.

Liberty would go on to score three runs, but it wasn’t enough as fourth-ranked West High rode the arm of Morgan to a 6-4 victory at Duane Banks Field.

Morgan scattered three hits and recorded 12 strikeouts over six innings while improving his record to 3-0 on the young season.

He combined to strike out seven of nine batters in innings four, five and six, and only had two walks, including one that was intentional.

It turns out the only two things that could stop Morgan was his pitch count and his head coach’s concern about his bright future in whatever sport that might be.

“It’s pitch count and you feel bad even approaching that,” Stumpff said. “He ended up over one-hundred.

“Marcus has such a future you want to really make sure that you’re taking care of it. So it’s a lot of stuff going on there.”

It is likely that Stumpff would’ve had to make a pitching change either way in the seventh inning due to the 110-pitch rule in high school.

So he figured why wait and why risk it with such a talented athlete?

Reliever Alex Swack struggled with his control, but he hung on to strikeout Alec Boldt for the final out of the game.

Morgan surrendered one unearned run in the first inning, but other than that, he was dominant. He pounded the strike zone and consistently got ahead of the batters with a mix of fastballs, sliders and curves.

“I felt like I had good control over my pitches all night,” said Morgan, who is a multi-sport star at West High, including being the starting quarterback. “Throwing strikes, that’s what I need to do and I feel like I did that well today.”

Morgan knew that he only had a limited number of pitches left when he took the mound in the seventh inning.

Stumpff asked him how he felt before taking the mound in the seventh, but that was the extent of their conversation.

“He didn’t really tell me anything,” Morgan said of Stumpff. “He asked me if I was good and I said I’m good and he knew that I knew I was getting close to that pitch limit.

“So I just went out there and tried to throw strikes in the last inning.”

Liberty was leading 1-0 when West rallied for three runs in the bottom of the fourth on three hits.

Senior Owen McAreavy smacked a run-scoring single between third base and shortstop to give West High its first lead of the game at 2-1 with two outs in the fourth.

The Trojans scored one run in the fifth and two more in the sixth inning and that was more than enough cushion for Morgan, who already has been offered a scholarship to play baseball for the University of Iowa.

“Marcus was really good,” said Liberty head coach and former West High assistant Tom Cronk. “He’s as good a pitcher as there’s going to be in the state.

“I thought we battled and that’s what you’ve got to do against good guys. You keep fighting and get his pitch count up and then whoever it’s going to be after that, it’s not Marcus.”

Monday’s game was awkward for both Cronk and Stumpff because they’re such good friends after having coached together at West High for over 20 years.

Cronk accepted the Liberty head coaching job before the 2018 season, and his former team is now a rival.

“It’s so hard because we are literally best friends, and we’ve been best friends for 20 years,” Cronk said. “But that being said, it’s good to compete. And after tomorrow we’ll be best friends again and we’ll be rooting for each other I know for years.”

Cronk was referring to the second of back-to-back games between West High and Liberty, which will be played on Tuesday at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids.

West High improved to 6-1 overall with Monday's victory, while Liberty fell to 4-4.

Junior Nolan Frey had two hits for Liberty, including a double off Morgan that drove in a run in the first inning.

Frey also drove in two runs with a single in the seventh.

Sophomore Keian Secrist started at pitcher for Liberty and held West High without a hit for the first two innings and scoreless for the first three innings.

Sercrist worked out of a bases-loaded jam with no outs in the third by recording two strikeouts and a ground-ball out.

Liberty High 100  000  3  –  4   4  1

West High    000  312  x  –  6  10  2

Keian Secrist, Ethan O’Donnell (5) and Sam Funke; Marcus Morgan, Alex Swack (7) and Ryan Cooper.

W – Marcus Morgan L – Keian Secrist

2B – ICL: Nolan Fry. ICW: Owen McAreavy

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