Prince of Peace baseball earns first win

By Jon Gremmels

Herald Sports Editor

BELLEVUE — Prince of Peace had enough of losing.

Just a year after restarting the school’s baseball program, the Irish suffered through a 0-12 regular season — after going 2-12 a year ago — while playing a schedule with about half as many games, if that, as their opponents.

While it’s not uncommon for teams to call the postseason a new season, the Irish made it a reality. And the record in that season now stands at 1-0 after they knocked off East Central 9-3 on Tuesday in an Iowa Class 1A District 7 baseball game at Cole Park.

“I just wanted to go out and get a win,” Prince of Peace pitcher Ian Flood said. “I was tired of losing.”

The Irish saw an opportunity for a win, too.

“We knew we had nothing to lose,” freshman third baseman Cameron Ryan said. “We were close with this team (a 6-2 loss to the Raiders on June 9) the first time.”

It was the first of two losses in Tuesday’s quarterfinals here in which the team with the better regular-season record was sidelined. Bellevue Marquette beat Preston 5-4 in the second game.

“It’s extremely disappointing as a team,” East Central coach Kip Opheim said. “I don’t want to take anything away from Prince of Peace — they played well — but we know we’re a better team than the way we played tonight. That’s baseball.”

Flood, who leads the Irish in most pitching categories — even though he says he shouldn’t — allowed two runs and three hits in the first inning but just one hit and one run after that as he won for the first time in eight decisions.

“I’m not really supposed to be a pitcher,” Flood, a junior, said. “I hadn’t really pitched before. I’m glad I had a good catcher (Travis Witt) behind the plate. He made me feel more comfortable.”

Flood felt anything but comfortable in the top of the first inning, though.

Three of East Central’s first four batters singled, starting with Cody Johnson’s leadoff hit. And the Raiders built a 2-0 lead on a run-scoring single by Kyle Johnson and a sacrifice fly by Ben Hildebrandt.

“I thought it was going to be a long game after that first inning,” Flood said.

Opheim said that in a way, that quick 2-0 lead might have worked against the Raiders (6-18).

“Young teams tend to get up and take a breath and let it soak in for longer than they should,” he said.

The Irish responded with an unearned run in the bottom of the first — Flood reached on a one-out error and scored on another error — and Flood felt better.

“That was really important,” he said. “It got us a bunch of momentum. It made us think we could stay in the game.”

Their spirit was helped further when they added two more hits in the second inning despite not scoring.

“Once we started hitting the ball, I knew we were going to do good,” Flood said.

The Irish, who came in with a .235 batting average (68 hits in 12 games), finished with 12 hits. Four of them came from No. 7 batter, Seth Hinrichs. After the third hit, someone on the Prince of Peace bench razzed him about having more hits in the game than he had all year. True, he confessed.

“I was 2-for-27 coming in,” he said.

No, Flood corrected him, “You’re 4-for-4 (in the new season).”

None of the Irish’s hits was more important than Hinrichs’ second of the night. His line-drive single into right field drove in a pair of runs and put Prince of Peace on top to stay, 4-2.

“It gives me a lot more confidence to know I can do it again,” he said of coming to the plate in that third inning already 1-for-1 on the night. An opposite-field hit wasn’t necessarily in the plans, though. “I swung a little too late,” he admitted.

That hit capped a three-run inning for the Irish, and it followed a run-scoring double down the left-field line by Ryan.

“I just wanted to make contact with it,” said Ryan, a .259 hitter during the regular season. Ryan also added a two-run single in a four-run sixth inning that sealed the victory.

On defense, the Irish had just one shaky inning after surrendering the two runs in the first. They admitted, though, that the fourth inning caused some concern.

Back-to-back errors gave East Central runners on second and third to start the inning and put the 4-2 lead in jeopardy. A walk loaded the bases, and when Josh Rathje reached on an error that scored Nate Wall and pulled the Raiders within 4-3, the Irish were worried.

“Three errors in that inning — I thought, ‘Here we go again,’” Prince of Peace coach Bob Mulholland said.

But Flood decided there wasn’t going to be a here-we-go-again repeat.

“I was just thinking after the three errors — we usually have one bad inning — ‘I don’t want to lose,’” Flood said. “I threw harder than ever. I figured I had to do it myself.”

He did just that, striking out the next two batters and then ending the inning with the bases loaded by getting leadoff hitter Cody Johnson to fly out to center fielder Anthony Sinn in shallow left-center.

Once the last out was recorded on a pitcher-to-catcer-to-first double play, the Irish and their fans were ready to whoop it up.

“We’ve had two or three games where we were ahead and couldn’t finish the job,” Mulholland said. “We finished what we started tonight.”



Scoring by innings

East Central 200 100 0 — 3 4 5

Prince of Peace 103 014 x — 9 12 3

Nate Wall and Kyle Johnson; Ian Flood and Travis Witt. Two or more hits — Prince of Peace (Seth Hinrichs 4, Sean Mulholland 2, Cameron Ryan 2). 2B — Prince of Peace (Ryan). RBIs — East Central (K. Johnson, Ben Hildebrandt, Josh Rathje); Prince of Peace (Ryan 3, Hinrichs 2, Jeremy Peters, Anthony Sinn).

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