The high school baseball postseason will begin Saturday, and AGWSR will take on North Butler in a 1A District 4 first round game. It’ll be played as part of a doubleheader at Wapsie Valley.
The Cougars, despite a down season, will enter the playoffs having played the fourth hardest schedule in Class 1A. In fact, all but four of their games in the regular season were against Class 2A opponents. Head Coach Justin Kerns on the matchup with North Butler.
“They’re built a lot like us,” Kerns says. “I know they have the Wangsness kid who’s a great pitcher. We also have some great pitchers. So that part I’m not too worried about. We have to put the ball in play. We can’t not give run support to our pitchers. And that’s going to be the biggest thing is the run support. And we just had that conversation with the boys. Since I’ve been assistant coach and now head coach, we’ve never made it through first round districts. It’s a personal goal of mine. And I said, don’t do it for me, but let’s do it for each other. Let’s do it for the senior on the team. Let’s play a little more ball. You know, we can win a competition. Let’s play a little bit more. So we’ll see, you know, just depends on what team’s going to show up that day, and how bad they want it.”
They’ll look to snap a 14-game losing streak.
The Bearcats closed conference play by winning the second game of a doubleheader with Northwood-Kensett Tuesday. Head Coach Chase Stohr on the team’s x-factors entering postseason play.
“Having a short memory, not letting one bad play, one bad inning kind of spiral or snowball,” Stohr says. “And just kind of having a fresh mind every single play, every inning and just see what happens.”
Pitcher Brody Wangsness is coming off one of the more dominant seasons in the Top of Iowa-East with an ERA of 0.89 and a league-leading 87 strikeouts.
The first pitch will be at 5:00 p.m. The winner will advance to Tuesday’s district semifinal against either Rockford or Wapsie Valley.
