The Iowa baseball team defeated Iowa Central Community College Wednesday by a score of 10-1 to move to 3-0 in the fall ball season.
The Hawkeyes and Tritons were scoreless through 4.5 innings of the contest. Iowa broke the tie in the bottom of the fifth, getting an opposite field solo home run from outfielder Taylor Zeutenhorst to make the score 1-0.
Iowa Central pushed a run across in the top of the sixth, but the Hawkeyes wasted no time adding to their total, thanks to an RBI from Trevor Kenyon and Jake Yacinich. Nick Roscetti also came across home after reaching on a push bunt to lead off the inning.
“I think we came out with a lot of good energy,” Yacinich said. “We played good defense and got the bats going late.”
In fall ball, nine innings are played before a break in the action for the teams to re-warm up and the field to be dragged. Because of this, the bottom of the ninth inning was played and the Hawkeyes added one more score.
Zeutenhorst, a senior, came home on fellow outfielder Dan Potempa’s single with two outs.
While Iowa managed to tally 5 runs on nine hits, it left nine runners on base before the break, including Potempa and Jimmy Francos in scoring position in the bottom of the ninth.
“We were taking pitches we should have been swinging at,” first year head coach Rick Heller said. “The guy who started is a solid guy … We stranded some guys, but I thought we turned it around as the game went on.”
Righty Jake Reinhardt gave up the only Triton run of the afternoon, but he managed to get the win for the Black and Gold. In addition to Reinhardt, Heller and his staff sent out five other pitchers before the gap. All the Hawkeye hurlers combined for 5 walks, 8 strikeouts, and 1 earned run, one hit batter, and a pickoff through nine innings.
Tyler Peyton, a sophomore transfer from Iowa Central, pitched two innings against his former school. He said he thought the team played well but has things to work on going forward.
“Having played there last year, I know they’re a good bunch of players, so I felt like we played well today,” the Grimes native said. “We could’ve gotten more hits when guys were on base, maybe it was a mental thing — I don’t know. We just couldn’t bring them in at the time.”
After the break during the exhibition, Iowa exploded for 4 runs in the home half of the 10th inning, sending all 10 batters to the plate.
Jake Mangler led off the inning with a single to right field and eventually crossed home after a Kenyon double. Powtempa also drove in two runs on a single in the inning.
Iowa managed 1 more run in the remainder of the contest and only allowed 1 hit to cruise to bring the run total to 10 in the 14-inning game.