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Lynx feisty, but late rally comes up short vs. Dons

STORY CITY – Mark Fisher’s ball club might still be strapped with a goose egg in the win column, but it’s not because of a lack of effort.

The youthful and feisty Webster City baseball team – starting two freshmen and two sophomores with plenty more baby faces in the dugout – nearly pulled of an improbable comeback before falling short against Don Bosco, 7-5, during Saturday’s Scandinavian Days Tournament, hosted by Roland-Story.

Trailing 7-0 entering the bottom of the seventh, the Lynx (0-6) rattled off three of their seven hits, highlighted by back-to-back two-RBI doubles by Ty Schnathorst and Cal Zahn, and had the tying run standing in the batter’s box when Dons’ reliever Cade Schares extricated his team from the jam by picking off freshman Rommel Martinez at first to end the game.

Don Bosco (7-1) may be a Class 1A program, but it’s hardly a pushover. The Dons ran their winning streak to six and had outscored the first five teams in the spurt by 87 runs (92-5), including a 32-0 romp over Clarksville.

“It was good to have a good outing,” Fisher said afterwards. “We’re a young team right now, but we’re not talking about walks and it was good to have a situation where we made the plays for the most part. This is a step in the right direction.”

Senior southpaw Seth Crouthamel went the distance and had one of his better outings on the bump. Working ahead in the count the majority of the time, he allowed just six hits and three walks while striking out 10. Only three of Don Bosco’s runs were earned.

“He got a lot of innings and that really helped out our pitching staff when we needed someone to step up and have a good outing,” Fisher said of Crouthamel, who threw 113 pitches, 82 of them for strikes. “He was really relaxed and pitched well, but we didn’t help him out as much as we needed to.”

WCHS made just two errors, but both were costly and led to four unearned runs in the third. The damage all came after Crouthamel had struck out the first two batters.

“It’s small little detail things right now, like being in the right spot for a cut-off and hitting the cut-off man,” Fisher said, noting both helped add to the third-inning damage following the errors.

Playing on the smaller of the two fields, the short porch aided Don Bosco’s two biggest hits – a solo home run to center in the first inning by Dalton Smith, and a two-run shot to the same part of the park by Trey Frost in the fourth.

Dons’ starting pitcher Trevor Brown had it on cruise control through the middle innings, siting down 10 of 11 batters during one stretch. WCHS went into the seventh inning with just three hits.

“Not to take anything away from (Brown) because he was pitching a very good game, but we were very passive (at the plate) in those middle innings,” Fisher said. “We were just reacting to what he was throwing instead of being the aggressor, which is what we did in that last inning. We’ve got to be able to do that.”

Brown plunked Cole Reigelsberger and Connor Shannon, and then walked Cole Zahn to load the bases with just one out in the seventh.

The Dons handed the ball over to eighth-grade hurler Bryce Schares, and he was promptly rocked. Schnathorst missed a grand slam by just a few feet, as his shot smacked off the fence in left. Cal Zahn went down the line in left for his two-bagger, and Jordan Moen added a bloop single to right.

Cade Schares came on to get the save for the Dons. Lynx freshman Max Hackbarth trimmed the margin to 7-5 with a deep RBI sacrifice fly to right.

Hackbarth, a lefty hitting in the clean-up spot, went 2-for-3 and continued to show why he’s positioned in the prime spot in the lineup.

“The big thing about him is he soaks up everything you tell him,” Fisher said of Hackbarth. “We’re getting to the point where we’re almost running out of things to tell him because he’s so technically sound. He was just relaxed out there … he played fearless.”

Zahn also smacked a first-inning single and went 2-for-4. Cole Zahn added a fifth-inning base knock up the middle.

Gilbert 8, Webster City 0

Gilbert right-handed hurdler Barrett Schonefeld owned WCHS in the Lynx second game, as he tossed a no-hitter with 11 strikeouts in the Tigers’ win.

WCHS also made nine errors, which led to seven unearned runs.

“We just made far too many defensive mistakes in the field,” Fisher said.

Daniel Halko made his season debut on the mound and got tagged with the loss. He allowed four hits and fanned nine in five innings of work.

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