Mid-Prairie perseveres in loss

WELLMAN - The mark of a good team is not necessarily always the win-loss record. How a team handles adversity can also lead to improvement.

The Mid-Prairie High School baseball team, ranked eighth in Class 2A, lost in eight innings Tuesday at Paul Bailey Field to nonconference foe Solon 6-4, but the type of game it was may have made a difference in the long run.

'This is exactly what we were hoping to get out of this ballgame,” Mid-Prairie head coach Andy Greiner said. 'We wanted to be challenged.”

The Golden Hawks have won their last three games and four of their last five by 10 runs or more.

'It's great to win by 10 runs,” Greiner said. 'We love that. But I don't know if that helps us like a game like this does.”

Mid-Prairie fell into a 2-0 hole before it got to bat and trailed 4-0 after the top of the second inning.

'There was some perseverance going on,” Greiner said. 'I thought we were able to create some momentum defensively. Once we started throwing strikes we were able to make some plays defensively and we fed off that. I thought it started to leak into our offense.”

Keegan Gingerich gave up six walks in those first two innings, five of which came before the first out of the second. Gingerich settled in with no more walks and shut out Solon until Monte Slaubaugh came in to pitch the seventh.

'Keegan is one of our better pitchers,” Greiner said. 'He was a little bit out of sorts at the beginning of the ballgame. We did not want to panic and do something dramatic too early. We wanted to give him a chance to work his way out of it. He would've been very upset with us if we had pulled him at that point.”

The Hawks got two runs in the second on three walks and a single by Vinny Bowlin.

It was tied in the fourth when Will Cavanagh and Bowlin each singled, stole second and scored on groundouts. The Hawks looked to score more with Brad Tornow and Aidan Rath on base but Tornow was picked off at second to end the threat.

'That was an aggressive mistake,” Greiner said. 'We are going to accept those and move on.”

Solon was gifted a couple of walks in the eighth inning, then an intentional walk loaded the bases with one out. Slabaugh got a strikeout but the next batter fouled off numerous pitches before a base hit up the middle.

The Hawks went down in order in the bottom of the eighth but Slabaugh had an impressive line drive to center that was caught on a dive inches before hitting the ground.

'The guys competed and got themselves off the floor after getting down early,” Greiner said. 'I cannot ask for a whole lot more than that.”