It had been 321 days since it last happened. The last time the core group of players on the Malcolm baseball team had tasted defeat was a junior legion game on June 28 in Beatrice. Two legion state championships and a 12-0 start to the spring season later, the top-ranked Clippers lost in the April 14 Trailblazer Conference Championship game against a tough Wahoo/Bishop Neumann/Lincoln Lutheran team.
Behind the arm of Ryan Bokelman, the Class B No. 9 Warriors cruised to a 5-1 win. The junior hurler allowed just two hits while fanning seven in four-and-two-thirds innings of work.
“We just weren’t able to put the ball in play when we needed to,” Malcolm coach Zach Wehner said. “If we started getting something going we just couldn’t keep it going like we have been all season.”
While Maddox Meyer was serviceable on the mound for the Clippers, the junior had no answer for Trenton Barry. The senior slugger hit his sixth home run and ninth double of the season as he went 4-for-4 with three RBIs.
“Barry is a very good baseball player,” Wehner said. “We knew coming in he was one of their ‘guys.’ He is leading their team in almost every batting category.”
The usually hot bats for Malcolm were cold as Hayden Frank’s double and a pair of singles from Colt Reiling and Noah Gonyea were the only hits the Clippers could generate.
“Our guys actually did a great job working their pitchers,” Wehner said. “We had multiple eight or nine pitch at-bats. We just struggled to string together many hits.”
Malcolm’s trip to its first Trailblazer Conference Championship game was tougher than expected. After being run-ruled by the Clippers in the season’s second week, Ralston proved to be a tougher out in the April 11 quarterfinal game. After base running gaffes ruined Malcolm’s chance to end the game early, the Clippers held on for a 17-16 victory.
“Ralston is a very good two-win team,” Wehner said. “We talked before the game that it was going to be a dog fight. We took care of business early, but weren’t able to keep our foot on the gas as we had a couple mental errors. That’s something you can’t do with a good team.”
In the slugfest, Meyer went 3-for-4 with three doubles while Mason Wisnieski went 3-for-4 with a double, a home run and five RBIs. Frank was 3-for-3 with a double, homer and four runs batted in.
The Clippers returned to their home field two days later to face a hot Platteview team that gave Malcolm all it wanted during the opening week of the season. Seven different Clippers hit safely in the 10-6 semifinal game in which Derek Erickson earned his third win of the season.
Malcolm (12-1) may see some of the best pitching in the state this week with trips to No. 3 Plattsmouth (8-3) on Monday (a 5-2 loss for Malcolm) and Class B No. 7 Beatrice (10-4) Tuesday (a 5-3 win for the Clippers). The Blue Devils’ Drew Iverson – a Wichita State commit – boasts at 1.68 ERA and has 27 strikeouts in 16 innings. Husker commit Tucker Timmerman leads Beatrice with a 0.35 earned run average and 36 strikeouts over 20 innings.
The Clippers travel to No. 8 Arlington (6-5) Friday, April 21, before heading to Centennial for a Saturday triangular with the Broncos (0-6) and No. 2 Central City/Centura/Fullerton (9-3). The Kernels are on a seven-game win streak and have one of the deepest pitching staffs in Class C.
“This will be another challenging and fun week,” Wehner said. “Our goals for weeks like this is to take one game at a time and not to look ahead. The pitching we’ll see this week will be a great challenge for our batters. Seeing pitchers like this will definitely help us prepare for districts.”
