(Story by Stephen McDaniel)
The Ankeny Centennial baseball team has officially closed out the regular season, and now all eyes are set on postseason play.
The Jaguars split their Monday night doubleheader finale against ninth-ranked Urbandale with senior Dylan Surat scoring the winning run as a pinch-runner in an 8-7 walk-off victory before having a late rally fall short in a 10-6 loss in the nightcap.
Despite not completing a sweep on its home field, Centennial coach Mark Hey likes where his squad is at entering the postseason.
“You’re never happy with a split, a loss or anything like that,” Hey said. “But I’m really, really proud of them, and I’m really happy with how they’re playing right now.”
The start of Centennial’s postseason has already been determined with the Jaguars slated to host Dallas Center-Grimes in a Class 4A substate quarterfinal on Friday.
Since postseason play is just a few days away, the Jaguars wanted to make sure that they kept their arms fresh and made good use of their bullpen to get them through their final two games of the regular season.
Centennial had seven different pitchers take the mound during Monday’s twinbill, and they combined for 292 total pitches thrown over the course of the two games.
Sophomore Brekken Miller and senior Trae Houser reached pitch counts of 66 and 68, respectively, as the team’s two starters. All the other pitchers were kept under 40 pitches each.
“We were trying to get pitching lined up, and we did some things differently than we would normally do like in a postseason game,” Hey said. “We didn’t want to run anybody up to 80, 90 or 100 pitches tonight, so we used a lot of our staff.”
Miller, along with juniors Jack Loutsch and Connor Williams and senior Colton Arndt, combined for nine strikeouts in the first game. They allowed nine hits, seven earned runs and five walks.
Williams (4-2) recorded the win in relief. He needed just three pitches to get the final two outs in the top of the seventh inning.
Houser, Williams and seniors Brady Stewart and Owen Lorenz combined for nine strikeouts in the nightcap. They allowed 14 hits, nine earned runs and two walks, with Houser (2-1) taking his first loss.
The Jaguar bats answered the call after they struggled to get the offense going during their 7-1 loss in the initial meeting at Urbandale on June 15.
Houser gave Centennial a 1-0 lead in the first inning to open up the day. He had the first of his two singles and eventually scored off a throwing error.
Urbandale answered back in the top of the third before Houser and Will Nesler led off the bottom of the inning with back-to-back singles.
Senior Will Morris broke things open by hitting a three-run homer over the left field fence for his first homer of the season, giving Centennial a 4-1 lead.
“I thought I had a couple of rough calls, I had a couple outside and inside that I didn’t get to go my way, (then) he hung me a curve ball and I caught it at the right angle,” Morris said. “It felt good (seeing it go over). I struggled the first like two-thirds of the season and now I’m rolling the last third. I’m hoping to take that into the postseason.”
Alex Cory dodged a tag at home plate later in the inning to make it 5-1, and Miller drove in a pair of runs with a single in the fourth to give the Jaguars a 7-2 lead.
The J-Hawks got a sacrifice fly in the fifth inning to ignite a rally. They followed with four more runs in the sixth, tying it up at 7-7 on a two-run homer by Gabe Blanshan.
Centennial avoided extra innings with senior catcher Jacob Battershell drawing a one-out walk before Surat entered as a pinch-runner in the bottom of the seventh.
A hit-and-run with Owen Gasperi that saw the ball be bobbled at second base and a throwing error going to third helped Surat go from first to home for the walk-off victory.
“It was a hustle play by Dylan, things kind of went our way, and the ball bounced our way on that one,” Hey said.
The Jaguars found themselves trailing by as much as 7-1 in the nightcap and managed to plate five runs in the final three innings in an attempted late-game rally.
Morris delivered an RBI double to cut it down to 7-3 in the fifth, and Houser hit a two-out, two-run single to make it 8-5 in the sixth.
Urbandale added two more runs in the top of the seventh, and the Jaguars were only able to get one run back in the bottom of the inning off a Cory triple and an RBI single by Miller.
“I know more than these two did it, but Alex Cory and Cade Newman in those last couple innings hit pretty routine ground balls and just absolutely sprinted down the line,” Hey said. “I think one was safe and one was out, but that doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that’s the attitude they have right now and that they’re not taking things for granted, not feeling sorry for themselves and they just hustled.”
The split left Centennial with records of 12-10 in the CIML Conference and 19-15 overall, while Urbandale finished 11-11 in the league and is now 24-13 on the season. The Jaguars tied for fourth place in the conference with 10th-ranked Valley, which split a doubleheader with Ankeny.
Dallas Center-Grimes (16-15) enters the postseason on a four-game losing skid. The Mustangs dropped a 9-3 decision to Johnston in their finale on Monday.
Centennial knows it needs to play its best ball and get the bats going right away if the Jaguars want to go on a postseason run.
“We just have to start off early,” Morris said. “When our leadoff guy gets on every inning, then we get on a roll, we score a lot of runs and just stay energetic throughout the whole game.”
