After winning the first game of Thursday’s doubleheader against visiting Waukee Northwest, the Ankeny baseball players weren’t going to be satisfied with splitting the twinbill.
“We just need to go out there and do the same thing,” Ankeny catcher Max Watson said after the 6-3 win. “Brock Adamson’s going to be on the mound, and I think it’s going to be a good one.”
Watson was right.
Adamson combined with Sam Hansen on a two-hitter and the 10th-ranked Hawks defeated No. 7 Northwest again, 8-0, to complete a sweep of the doubleheader, allowing Ankeny to move into sole possession of first place in the CIML Iowa Conference.
The Hawks improved to 11-3 in the league and 12-8 overall. The Wolves’ records dropped to 11-5 and 14-9.
Northwest fell into a second-place tie with surging Ankeny Centennial, which has won seven straight conference games.
“That’s not something that we really focus on,” Ankeny coach Joe Balvanz said of the league race. “But you figure if you take three out of four (games) from everybody and sweep a couple of the teams, you’re probably going to be tough to catch.”
Adamson (2-2) allowed two walks and had four strikeouts over the first five-plus innings. Hansen then pitched two hitless innings of relief to complete the shutout.
“We had a lot of contributors tonight,” Balvanz said. “Brock did a nice job, but he kind of ran out of steam and got tired in the sixth (inning). Sam finished out both games for us, and that was huge. When you get to these Thursday doubleheaders at the end of the week, it almost comes down to who has got the most (pitching) depth.”
Tamden Webb-Tate went 2-for-2 in the win, while Isaiah Otten went 2-for-3. They each had a triple and drove in a run.
Thomas DeBrower went 2-for-4 with a double, and Ben Sandvig went 2-for- 4 with two runs scored. Jamison Patton and Watson each had one RBI.
In the first game, Easton Dunwoody (2-3) combined with Hansen on a three-hitter. Dunwoody allowed two earned runs over the first six innings and had eight strikeouts.
“For me it was just curveball, slider, and my changeup was working really nice, too,” Dunwoody said. “They were having a tough time touching it. I just really tried to work a lot of my off-speeds and then resort to a fastball every now and then just to throw them off and get a couple strikeouts with it.”
“Easton did a very nice job,” Watson said. “He threw a lot of off-speed pitches–stuff they couldn’t hit. He had a very nice outing.”
In the bottom of the sixth, Watson hit a bases-loaded single with two outs to bring home a pair of insurance runs.
“I had two strikes and I just had to come through, put the ball in play and try to get a hit and get some runs to score,” Watson said.
Watson also picked a runner off first base in the fifth inning. He caught both games for the Hawks.
“Max is doing a tremendous job,” Balvanz said.
Watson went 2-for-3 in the win. Webb-Tate also knocked in two runs.
Sandvig went 2-for-4 with a double and one RBI. Third baseman Carson Agan went 2-for-2 and scored twice.
“Agan made a handful of plays that we needed him to make, and he had some good at-bats, too,” Balvanz said.
Ankeny rebounded from a 7-6 loss to Carlisle in a non-conference game on Wednesday.
“You’ve got to have short memories,” Balvanz said. “You can’t get too high and you can’t get too low, and you’ve just got to try to stay as consistent as you can. When we lost to Carlisle, we didn’t do a very good job of situational hitting. And I wasn’t sure how we were going to respond. But the guys really responded well. They came to the park with a great attitude, and I thought we had a lot of energy in the dugout.”
The Hawks will play Davenport North (6-11) in the Tim Heggen Invitational on Saturday at 10 a.m. at Centennial.
