Cougar baseball enjoying the ride

ACKLEY – It’s all happening so fast.

Luke Starr went from doing no pitching during the COVID-19 shutdown to putting in the work with complete games this summer.

“The arms are sore, but it’s still fun,” Starr said.

On AGWSR’s Senior Night, the ace pitcher put together another gem, striking out 13 in a shutout of South Hardin on June 29, with the Cougars victorious by a 7-0 margin.

Now the Cougars are off to a 6-1 start to the COVID-shortened season, while already making their postseason plans.

Where did the time go?

“It could have been really easy to go a lot of different ways this season,” AGWSR head coach Dave Showalter said. “I know a lot of guys were working during the time off and making some good money and some guys were working on their college classes that were still going on. I’m sure the focus wasn’t always there on baseball there. But once we got together, the guys have been really committed.”

Starr allowed three hits to the Tigers, hitting two batters and walking two more but getting through seven innings with 95 pitches.

“I’m just getting in a groove early and staying with it, the fielders are doing a good job of making plays,” Starr said. “The funnest part is we’re scoring plenty of runs to win games.”

AGWSR started the scoring in the first inning when Ben Macy scored on a South Hardin error. The Cougars busted it open in the fourth on a two-RBI single by Wyatt Benning, a Luke Starr RBI single and a Brody Roder RBI hit, all with two outs in the inning.

“The old adage of just put the ball in play to give yourself a chance,” Showalter said. “We called a couple hit-and-runs and executed really well, scoring on both of them and gave [Starr] enough, I’m proud of our offense approach again.”

South Hardin errors led to three of AGWSR’s runs charged as unearned to starter Dante Dolash. Dolash allowed five hits with nine strikeouts, two walks and one hit batsmen.

“We had opportunities to make plays and they took advantage of our mistakes,” South Hardin coach Dick Shindelar said. “I thought Dante pitched fairly well and they didn’t hit the ball hard off him, but they took advantage of free passes and things like that. We’ve got to clean that up before we go too much further.”

John Walters had two hits off Starr and Ryan Walters contributed a third. Between walks and hit batters, South Hardin ended up leaving more men on base (6) than AGWSR (5) on Monday.

“Starr’s a decent pitcher, and we knew he was going to be around the plate, we’ve just got to be a little more aggressive,” Shindelar said, “a little bit smarter at the plate.”

AGWSR will travel to West Fork to start district play on July 11 in a rematch of a June 18 game won by the Cougars in extra innings.

“We’ve had a lot of fun,” Showalter said. “We’ve got a loose group of kids that like to have fun and then come in here and take care of business. It’s really fun to see.”

AGWSR 7, South Hardin 0

AGWSR       100   420   0     -    7     7     2

S. Hardin     000   000   0     -    0     3     4

Winning battery– Luke Starr and Brody Roder. Losing battery – Dante Dolash, Kolby Winter (6) and John Walters. Two or more hits– AGWSR (Ben Macy, Bro. Roder); SH (Walters). 2B– AGWSR (Macy, Bro. Roder).  SAC– None. SB– AGWSR (Lane Abbas 2, Wyatt Benning 2, Macy). HBP– AGWSR (Bo Gerbracht). RBI– AGWSR (Benning 2, Bro. Roder, Starr, Bradly Roder).