Hermantown rebounded from its first baseball loss of the season at Rock Ridge 3-2 last Monday with a doubleheader sweep at North St. Paul, 3-1 and 10-7, and a victory at Hibbing, 14-3.
“We ran into a great arm in Dylan Hedley at Rock Ridge and I think we’ve played our best baseball of the season since,” Hawks coach Billy Tafs said Sunday night. “Anytime you can go to the Twin Cities and pick up a couple wins against some of the big boys it breeds confidence.
“Our hitters struggled against Rock Ridge, but got back on track against North St. Paul and Hibbing. Dawson Rannow went five-for-five against Hibbing and raised his batting average to over .600 for the season. Carter Gunderson, Caden Olson also had a great week at the plate.”
Regular starting catcher River Freeman, a sophomore and arguably the team’s best college and pro prospect, earned his first pitching start of the season in the opener against North St Paul.
“River didn’t disappoint, throwing a complete-game one-hitter with 11 strikeouts, to collect his first win of the season,” said Tafs.
The Hawks (9-1) will visit Superior today and will face Duluth Marshall in their 2023 home opener at 4:30 Wednesday at historic Fichtner Field.
Hermantown is also scheduled to host neighborhood rival Proctor next Monday and Grand Rapids Tuesday.
“We’re at the halfway point of our season and the second half will be condensed with five games scheduled in each of the next two weeks,” said Tafs. “Wyatt Carlson, our senior leadoff hitter, should finally return from his injury mid-week, so that will be like a nice internal trade deadline acquisition as he has missed the last two and one-half weeks.
“The first QRF was released last week, and we came in at No. 4 in the state which is as high as any Hermantown team has been. Everyone is really excited about that. However the competition ramps up significantly in the final two weeks, and we are going to have to get a lot of contributions from a lot of different pitching arms in order to consistently compete. Right now defense is still the focus. If we continue to get better in that area and continue to get solid outings from our pitching staff I think our bats are good enough right now that we should be a pretty tough out in June.”