Tuesday night at Crawfordsville featured a great pitchers dual as the Athenians welcomed the Western Boone Stars for game one of their Sagamore Conference series. On the mound for CHS was senior ace Kale Wemer and the Stars countered with their ace in Bryce Kopriva. The two aces put on a clinic and heading into the sixth inning CHS held a 1-0 lead. However the Stars got things going when Gavin Hawkins reached on Jude Coursey’s first error of the season at shortstop. Jackson Grimes then laced a double that scored Hawkins and then two batters later Luke Jackson hit another double that scored Grimes and that was all the runs the Stars needed as they secured a 2-1 win over the Athenians, handing them their first SAC loss of the season.
“Hats off to WeBo for a hard fought game,” Cville coach Brett Motz said. “They did a good job of staying with it and go the timely hits that they needed. I thought out guys still competed very hard and played well. We were getting guys on base most of the night but just couldn’t come through with the big hit we needed to get some more runs across.”
The final stat line for both pitchers included some great all-around numbers. For Wemer, he threw all seven innings and gave up just five hits and one earned run while walking none and striking out a dozen. Kopriva had a similar stat line also going the distance and allowing just five hits and one earned run. He walked two and struck out seven.
“First of all Kale Wemer is a heck of pitcher and you can see why he’s going to Purdue next year,” Stars coach Michael Nance said. “I really felt like all night our guys put together competitive at-bats against him. We did strike out 12 times but we were also still putting the ball in play and trying to make things happen. Both Jackson Grimes and Luke Jackson are two senior captains and when we needed them to come through, they did and that’s why we were able to score those two runs there.”
Cville got the their one run i the fourth inning when Bryce Dowell began with a lead-off single. A sac bunt by Kaden Patton moved Dowell over to second base and then Matt Miller delivered the RBI single. Miller accounted for two of the five CHS hits on the night. Dowell, Coursey, and Wyatt Motz all had singles as well. The Athenians stranded seven bases runners in the loss as in five of the seven innings, they left at least one runner on base.
The Stars out-field also made some nice catches as the Athenians hit three balls all the way to the warning track, but all three found the gloves of the Stars out-field.
“These are the kind of games that we’re going to see in the state tournament and just have to find a way to come out on top,” Motz said of the narrow loss. “We did a good job of barreling up some balls and give credit to their defense for making some good plays. We couldn’t get a rally going with those two or three hits in a row that we needed.”
Nance made sure to credit Kopriva who battled runners on base all night long, but still worked his way out of a few jams and was able to slam the door shut and give the Stars the win.
“We know that when Bryce is out there we have a chance to win every game,” Nance said. “He jokes with us about if we can give him one or two runs then he likes our chances and that’s all it took tonight with him pitching like he did.”
Crawfordsville falls to 10-7 (7-1 SAC0 on the season with the loss while the Stars improve to 10-6 (5-3 SAC) with the win.
The two teams meet at WeBo on Wednesday as Cville will turn to Dowell on the mound and the Stars will counter with freshman lefty Quinn Westerfeld. First pitch from WeBo is set for 5:30 p.m.
