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CEDAR RAPIDS – They took only five innings each to win a pair of regular-season baseball games over Cedar Falls. Back-to-back 10-runners.
Which had to make you know this third game for the Cedar Rapids Prairie Hawks against their Mississippi Valley Conference rival to the north was going to go all seven. It had to, especially considering the stakes here.
Which it did. Though the score differential didn’t change a whole lot.
An eight-run second inning catapulted Prairie to an eventual 11-4 win in this Class 4A substate final on the far southwest side. The Hawks (29-9) will head to Sioux City for the 4A portion of the state tournament next week, their first game Tuesday against an unknown opponent.
It’s Prairie’s first state baseball tournament qualification since 2021. Or you could say the Hawks are at state for the second time in five years.
However you want to phrase it.
“For me, I was so confident coming into this game,” said Prairie’s Collin McClintock. “I told my family I was a little more nervous for the first game against Waterloo East (which turned out to be an 11-1, five-inning win) than I was coming into this game. Because I had so much confidence in our team. That we’d come out, put some good swings together and win the game. I knew we were going to do that.”
McClintock has the nickname “Double” because he has two letter ‘Ls’ in his first name. The senior center fielder was “Double” here because he had three of them in his first three at-bats.
His second two-RBI two-bagger was to right-center field in the middle of that eight-run bottom of the second. Cedar Falls got the game’s first run in the top of the second when Cade Steffen hit a home run to left field.
“We knew if we fell behind, we’d be fine because you’ve got to score to win in baseball,” McClintock said. “Came back in, everybody was calm and under control. We just put together good swings all night. I think our approach coming into the game was if we can hit, we’re going to outscore them.”
Prairie finished the game with 14 hits in their six at-bats, piling up half of those in the second. Shraden Lechtenberg joined McClintock in the three-hit club, while Kamren Francois, Maddux Mueller and Michael Day each having two hits.
“I tried to do my job of getting on (in the second). My teammates picked me up after I did so,” Lechtenberg said. “We just snowballed. We kept getting on, kept feeding off each other, and we ended up putting up eight. It felt good after that.”
“We’re definitely that type of team that when we get hot, we’re all hot,” said Prairie Coach James Nelson. “And when we were cold there, losing some games, we were all cold. Now we’re kind of hot again. I said before that I’m so proud of these kids for not giving in. you know what I mean? Because in sports, it’s so easy when things don’t go your way to doubt yourself and give up. These kids never did. They stayed together the whole time.”
Tait Tierney threw a complete game for the win on the mound for Prairie. He gave up six hits, walked one and struck out four. Only three of the four runs charged to him were earned.
CF starting pitcher Dash Shortway did not pitch against Prairie in the regular season and had the best statistics this season of any Tigers pitchers, but he couldn’t get out of the second inning, charged with eight hits and eight runs in 1 2/3 innings.
Nolan Farmer threw 1 1/3 innings out of the bullpen for Cedar Falls, with Jack Wilson finishing from there. The Tigers scored an unearned run in the fourth and got two in seventh thanks to back-to-back pinch hits: a double for Tristin Raisty and single lost in the dusk off the bat of Josh Grete.
Prairie is the seventh seed in 4A at state and plays second-seeded Johnson (26-11) in a 2 p.m. game at Lewis and Clarke Park in Sioux City. But it feels it has the ability to make a run at this whole thing.
“I agree 100 percent,” Lechtenberg said. “I feel like we have all the talent in the world to go win it, to go put a mark on the state.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” Nelson said. “I think anybody could, any team there. I think there’s a lot of parity all the way through. Thinking about the other teams we’ve had, we think this is a good mix of what we’ve had before. So, no doubt, we’re going in to win it.”
