Trinity Lutheran’s baseball team used patience at the plate and aggressive baserunning to score three runs in the first inning, and an insurance run in the third, for a 4-1 win against Christian Academy at Alf Schneider Field on Monday afternoon.
The game was called after 5½ innings because of darkness.
“We were aggressive early in the count and got ourselves on base and put the ball in play,” Cougars coach Bob Tabeling said. “We got some steals, and the next thing you know, with two outs, we get a hit that puts another run in.
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“We scored three in the first inning, and as we shared with the team, you put runs on the other team and it puts pressure on everybody. We had aggressive swings, we were aggressive on the base paths and it got us three runs in the first inning.”
Jake Moore and Ross Kruse drew walks for the Cougars in the bottom of the first. Moore stole second, and went to third on a wild pitch.
After Kruse walked, the pitcher threw another wild pitch that allowed Moore to score and Kruse to move to second. Sam Crick walked, and Chandler Reynolds singled to drive in Kruse with the second run.
When Reynolds took off for second, the pitcher balked and allowed Crick to score to make it 3-0.
Jacob Schult doubled in the third inning. He advanced to third in a passed ball and scored on another balk.
Crick, a sophomore right-hander, retired the Warriors in order through the first three innings. Will Hussung led off the fourth with a double to left, and he scored on a single by Derrick Wright.
Crick finished with 10 strikeouts, four hits and with two walks.
“Sam threw a great game,” Tabeling said. “He threw a complete game and threw a lot of strikes. He was ahead of the batters a lot and threw the ball over the plate and gave up one run. That was a very good example of pitching from the front side and them having to catch up.”
The Cougars did not have any errors.
“We came to the two-out situations, and we made that last out to close out an inning and got ahead in the count and made defensive plays behind him even with having to make adjustments with our infield in different spots,” Tabeling said.
“We’re just going to have to do that the rest of the year. As a coaching staff we’ve talked about it, and we’re going to have to put some people in different spots, and people are just going to have to do different things. Just catch the ground balls and pop flies, nothing special, just the routine plays, and I thought we did a really nice job of that.”
The Cougars (2-4) and will play Crothersville on Thursday.