Highland drops out of baseball postseason

RIVERSIDE — North Cedar doubled its win total Monday in a 4-1 victory at Highland in the first round of the postseason.

“We picked a bad night to have a bad night,” Highland head baseball coach Seth Milledge said. “We didn’t put our best foot forward,”

The Huskies refused to let their season slip away and had the tying run on base and the winning run at the plate in the seventh inning with nobody out. But a strikeout and two groundouts ended the inning, the game and the Huskies’ season.

“This has to be something that drives us, moving forward,“ Milledge said. ”I’m not saying we were embarrassed by our efforts because we were right there.“

Highland was hosting the first round games — Hillcrest defeated English Valleys 10-0 in the early game Monday — because of the stellar season it had. The Huskies were second in the Southeast Iowa Super Conference North Division with a 13-3 record and finished 17-7 overall. Make that a season-ending record of 17-8 while North Cedar advances with a 2-19 record to play Hillcrest (13-9, 9-7) Tuesday.

North Cedar’s Tadan Lodge had arguably his best pitching night as a high school athlete. Lodge, who has a 8.64 earned run average with opponents batting average at .312, pitched six innings with three walks, a hit batter and 10 strikeouts.

When Highland’s Connor Grinstead singled to start the seventh inning, it was just the second Huskies hit of the game. (Luke Miller had started the Huskies night with a single in the first inning.) Brenton Bonebrake was hit by a pitch, so Lodge was lifted for Bill Condon, who gave up a single to Ethan Paisley. Paisley had come in to pitch for Highland in the fifth inning replacing Connor Grinstead. With the No. 9 batter, No. 1 and No. 2 due up, the winning run was at the plate with no outs.

It was no dice though as Condon got three straight outs.

North Cedar probably had its best game, and Highland did not match that level.

"Baseball is a fickle game and maybe it’s something we will learn,“ Milledge said.

Coaches are often haunted more by the losses than enjoyment from triumphs. Milledge struggled with his pitcher choice. He had planned on Chase Schultz should the game have been played when it was scheduled — Saturday.

“You look where you’re at, and you pick and choose, and you make decisions,” Milledge said. "Chase was going to throw his 65 pitches and then he’s coming out to go with Ethan after that. I felt like I needed Chase for Hillcrest, so that’s why I chose Connor.“

Grinstead had a 4-1 record and is second team all-conference.

With only one senior lost, Highland has a lot coming back to learn from this game.

“I really thought this team this team would be in a substate game this year,“ Milledge said.

Milledge hasn’t lost many first-round games in his six years as coach for the Huskies and last year may have been the first time Highland played on the road in the first round.

“Travis Griffin from North Linn is scouting this game so if the No. 1 team in the state is expecting to play us that means something,” Milledge said. “We have that expectation from them and for ourselves.”

In high school football, Sigourney-Keota was the only 8-1 team in the state that didn’t make the playoffs in 2019 and the returning players used that failure to drive them to a semifinal appearance at the UNI-Dome. If Highland uses this defeat in the same way, look out for the Huskies next year.

"I hope this burns, lights a fire in the belly, puts a chip on their shoulder,“ Milledge said.