TOPEKA — John Taylor considered himself relieved, but hardly satisfied.
The Iola AA American Legion Indian baseball team took a huge step toward qualifying for Saturday’s semifinals of the Senior Legion State Tournament with a 5-3 win over Larned on Thursday afternoon. Iola (19-9) stands at 2-0 in pool play, with one more pool game set for Friday afternoon against Hiawatha.
“I don’t feel like we played our best baseball,” said Taylor, Iola’s head coach. “We didn’t have good at-bats, we weren’t smart on the base paths, we made a lot of mistakes we don’t normally make. Mostly I feel relieved that we got through it.”
The Indians won despite notching only two hits against Larned’s pitchers. Iola took advantage of 10 walks and several key Larned errors that led to a three-run outburst in the second inning.
“Their defense helped us a lot,” Taylor said. “We don’t win the game if they don’t make more mistakes than us. We did hit some hard ground balls that did make them make mistakes. When you win because they make more mistakes than you, it’s not as satisfying.”
The pitching of Trey Sommer and Kaiden Barnett kept Iola in front.
Sommer was crisp through the first three innings before tiring a bit in the fourth, when Larned rallied for three runs to tie the score.
“That’s on me a little bit because he (Sommer) hasn’t pitched as much this summer as he needs to,” Taylor explained. “He labored a little bit quicker than I wanted him to, but at the end of the day, he kept us in the game and is a big reason why we won.”
A bases-loaded walk to Eli Smith pushed Iola back on top in the bottom of the fourth. Nathan Louk’s RBI single in the sixth drove in TJ Taylor for Iola’s fifth and final run of the day. Taylor, who had led off the frame with a single, had Iola’s only other hit.
That was enough for Barnett to finish things off on the mound. He earned the win after striking out three over three innings of work, allowing two hits.
Sommer finished his Thursday tossing four innings, allowing three runs on five hits with four walks and struck out one.
The Indians took a 3-0 lead in the second inning without benefit of a hit. Gavin Page drove in a run when his ground ball was misplayed for an error before Evan Lucke’s hard grounder turned into a two-run error.
Larned’s Owen Reece took the loss, tossing five frames of two-hit baseball while striking out five. Only two of Iola’s five runs against Reece were earned.
