Hawks Face Ar-We-Va in Denison

WINNER ADVANCES TO STATE; GAME ON KKRL 95.7

East Greene takes on Ar-We-Va (Westside) tonight in the substate championship in Denison with the winner advancing to the Class 1A State Baseball Tournament next week at Principal Park in Des Moines. Start time is 7 p.m. and the game will be broadcast on station KRRL of Carroll, 93.7 FM via live Internet streaming at www.1380kcim.com.

East Greene goes into the game as champions of District 15, after beating Southeast-Webster Grand, Coon Rapids-Bayard and No. 4 Elk Horn-Kimballton/Exira. The Hawks are 19-11 and finished fifth in the 10-team West Central Conference with an 8-9 record. The Hawks finished a game behind Earlham (9-8). EG got a win over Earlham earlier in the season but their home-and-home rematch was rained out. If EG had played that game and won, they would have tied the Cardinals at 9-9 and finished fourth in the league. Coon Rapids-Bayard and Woodward-Granger won the conference with 17-1 records and Des Moines Christian finished third. All three of those teams are 1A schools, which gave the 1A teams four of the top 5 places in the 10-team conference, which was evenly divided this year with five teams each in 1A and 2A.

Woodward-Granger fell to top ranked Martensdale-St. Mary’s 4-2 in Madrid on Saturday night. MSt.M (39-0) takes on HLV (Victor) (20-3) in the Substate 5 Championship tonight at Dowling High School in West Des Moines.

Ar-We-Va brings a 12-13 record into the EG matchup. Ar-We-Va beat Charter Oak-Ute, Woodbine and Woodbury Central (Moville) to win the District 16 championship.
The Rockets finished sixth in the nine-team Western Valley South Conference with a 7-9 mark. Three of the nine teams in the WVS are 2A schools, and 2A Logan-Magnolia took the title with a 15-1 mark. The other 2A schools are IKM-Manning and West Monona (Moorhead).

Western Valley South Conference
Logan-Magnolia 15-1
West Harrison (Mondamin) 13-3
IKM-Manning 13-3
Woodbine 9-7
West Monona (Onawa) 10-8
Ar-We-Va (Westside) 7-9
Boyer Valley (Dunlap) 4-12
Charter Oak-Ute 1-15
Whiting 1-15

Ar-We-Va and EG had two mutual opponents this past season, Earlham and Glidden-Ralston. Earlham beat the Rockets 9-6 and Glidden-Ralston beat them 7-4. GR and Ar-We-Va faced each other again in the consolation game of GR’s four-team tournament on July 3 with the two teams ending the game in a 7-7 stalemate when it was ended due to rain. That game goes into the record books as a non-completed game and is not included in either team’s season record.

EG advanced with a big 8-5 upset of undefeated EHKE. The Spartan’s ace hurler Carson Smith struck out 15 Hawks but he gave up six hits and walked five.

“He didn’t have his good stuff and everything was flat,” EHKE coach Tony Peterson told the Atlantic News Telegraph. “And they were ready from the beginning.”

Three Hawks got key extra base hits off Smith. Tom Beger lead the Hawk barrage with a home run in the sixth inning that drove in two runs. Jessie Priest had a two-run triple in the first and Reed Ostrander slammed an RBI double.

Wes Onken started on the mound but was beaned accidentally in the helmet while batting. Through three innings he gave up three runs on four hits, walked two, hit one batter, had one wild pitch, and struck out three. Tyler Cooklin came on in relief to start the fourth inning and pitched the rest of the way, giving up two runs on two hits, one hit batter, four walks and striking out seven.

Aaron Lyons came through with another key defensive play when he nabbed a running catch in the sixth inning.

Ar-We-Va beat Woodbury Central in Moville 3-2 on Saturday night to take the District 16 title. Ryan Schurke got the win, giving up six hits, three walks and striking out six.

EYE ON GJ SAYS: These two schools are pretty familiar with each other as they square off in 8-man football each season and run in many of the same track meets in the spring. The last two seasons Ar-We-Va has been a non-conference football opponent but in previous years both teams were in District 2 along with Glidden-Ralston and Coon Rapids-Bayard. These same four teams will be reunited again this fall in District 7, where EG has played the last two seasons. Other schools in the 8-team district are Walnut, a holdover along with EG, GR and CRB from the D7 the last two seasons and Western Valley South members Charter Oak-Ute, Woodbine and Boyer Valley.

Hopefully all the beatings EG has taken on the gridiron from the Rockets will be enough of a motivating factor for the Hawks on the diamond tonight. Interestingly, Denison is on the other side of the three towns on Highway 30 that makeup the AWV district—Arcadia, Westside and Vail—so hopefully driving through this “Rocket territory” will get the Hawks extra-psyched by the time they reach the field in Denison. This will truly be a “Battle of the Lincoln” (Highway) as both schools are located in towns on the original Lincoln Highway as is Denison, site of the substate championship game.

EG rolled into last year’s substate game with a “losing” record (13-14) so they will not be taking the Rockets lightly. Their big wins over CRB and EHEK are of no consequence now because if the Hawks want to head back to the Principal they will need to put all their focus and intensity in beating the Rockets—the standard one game at a time clearly applies here.