Seniors Win Over Creighton

Games on Tuesday, June 21 with Bloomfield/Madison were washed out with the storm and will not be made up. However, Thursday, June 23 brought Creighton to O'Neill to play both Irish teams again. The Juniors started the night off with Kyle Loecker on the mound. A couple of walks and some timely Creighton hitting lead to a 0-5 lead for Creighton after three innings. Donnie Taylor came in to relieve Kyle and held them to only two more runs in the final four innings ,but the O'Neill bats never got going, only scratching out two hits the entire game. The Irish left six runners on base and suffered a triple play when we had the bases loaded in the sixth inning. The Irish could not repeat the Berrypepper Days game of the prior week and lost 1-7. 

The Irish Seniors played one of the best games of the season against Creighton for the nightcap. Creighton's ace Klay Fuchtman took the mound for the visitors while Jordyn Johnson pitched for the Irish. The game was a battle of pitchers. Both teams could only muster two hits each in the first seven innings. Creighton loaded the bases in the sixth but could not score. The Irish got their lead off batter to third base in the seventh but also could not advance him to the plate. Jordyn Johnson struck out 14 Creighton batters while pitching the first seven innings. Kyle Eby came in to pitch for the Irish in the top of the eighth inning, striking out the last two batters looking. In the bottom of the eighth inning after a ground out, pinch hitting Josh Hoferer slammed a single up the middle. Luke Loecker was sent in to pinch run and got to second on a wild pitch. Clay Fuchtman struck out the next batter for the second out. Then Ian Lueninghoener came to the plate and stroked a 1-1 pitch down the third base line into left field to score Luke from second for the only run of the game. That ended the extra inning game as a 1-0 victory for the Irish.

The following night the Irish Juniors traveled to Randolph for a single game. Shane Willats started on the mound for O'Neill. The Irish took a 6-1 lead in the top of the third but Randolph scored seven runs in the bottom half of the inning. Luke Loecker took over the pitching duties in the third and finish the game allowing no more runs after the third inning. Meanwhile the Irish scored five more runs in the top of the fourth inning with just one hit and a number of walks and stolen bases. The Irish scored four more runs in the sixth and added one in the seventh to make the final score 16-8. For the game, the Irish had 10 stolen bases with 20 batters either getting walks or hit by a pitch as Randolph pitchers had difficulty finding the plate. The Irish defense was solid, only committing two errors the entire night. 

The next regularly scheduled games are on Monday, July 27 with Burwell (Seniors have a double header) in O'Neill and July 1 for the last league games at Neligh. The following week begins the Elkhorn Valley League Tournament.