Hampton keeps it close in loss to Humboldt

HAMPTON— After a rough first inning, the Hampton-Dumont-CAL Bulldogs baseball team kept the game close but fell short to the Humboldt Wildcats 7-3 on June 12. The Bulldogs are now 4-13 on the year.

Humboldt jumped out to a 4-0 lead after the first inning and a 5-0 lead after the second inning. But the Bulldogs cut into the lead by scoring two runs in the third inning to make it 5-2. The Bulldogs then added a run in the fifth inning to make it 5-3. But the Wildcats were able to get the bases loaded in the seventh inning and scored two more runs to make it 7-3.

The Bulldogs had four hits and two walks in the game. Cael Burmester had three hits in the game and Brody Walton added one hit. Jaxon Moats forced two walks for the Bulldogs. The Bulldogs also got runners on base thanks to four errors by Humboldt. Burmester led the team with one RBI. On the mound, Dawson Wikert pitched six innings and struck out six batters while giving up seven runs on eight hits and two walks.

Head coach Matt Lokenvitz said that getting back into the game after Humboldt jumped out to a quick lead shows that the team is getting better.

“This team is a young team and we are actually younger now than what we used to be as I am starting more freshmen than I was a couple of weeks ago,” Lokenvitz said. “They are learning, they are growing, and they are getting better. They are resilient which is great. Just being able to show with Dawson coming back after that first inning was a little shaky and then he pitched a great game throughout the rest of the six innings.”

Humboldt scored the team’s seven runs on nine hits and four walks.

Humboldt came into the game in second place in the conference and Lokenvitz said that keeping the game close against such a tough opponent shows the Bulldogs how good the team can be. One thing that Lokenvitz said the Bulldogs can take away from the game is that they have to keep building off of the experience.

“We talked about not taking those steps backwards,” Lokenvitz said. “It is about building and building and we had a couple of games here, the Webster City game on Monday and last week we had the Iowa Falls game where we kind of took some steps back. We talked about continuing to build on the momentum that we have and not take steps backwards.”

Lokenvitz said he thinks the Bulldogs are moving in the right direction but that one thing he would like to see the team work on is keeping opponents runners on base and to not give up so many stolen bases, as Humboldt stole four bases in the game.

“We have to hold runners on better and thankfully we have a couple of practices now and  Thursday and Friday which we are going to work on a bunch of little things,” Lokenvitz said. “But we just have to keep with the communication. We can hold runners on a little bit better and I think that will help our catcher and allow them to throw out guys and not just let them steal on us whenever they want. We are throwing strikes, our pitchers here are going complete games for the most part and so just some small tweaks. We don’t need to make a big overhaul anymore so we are going to make some small tweaks and we are going to be good to go.

The team’s next game is at home on June 19 vs Algona, 7:30 p.m.