Routs of Phillips, Prentice allow Redmen to keep pace with Athens

The trio of Price County baseball teams continued to be no match Tuesday for the Rib Lake Redmen, who used a nine-run third inning to build an insurmountable lead and cruise to a 19-4, fiveinning win over the Phillips Loggers.

By continuing to take care of business, Rib Lake remains in line to make next week’s games against Athens a series that will determine the 2021 Marawood North championship. The Redmen improved to 6-1 in league play and took a half-game lead over 5-1 Athens, who is planning to complete its suspended game from Tuesday at Chequamegon today, Thursday. Athens leads that game 6-0 in the fourth inning.

Rib Lake and Phillips sat through about a half-hour lightning delay, but otherwise dodged the heavy rain that hit some locales to get the game in. The teams are scheduled to hold a rematch in Rib Lake today.

“We hit the ball well and played good defense,” Rib Lake head coach Dick Iverson said of Tuesday’s win. “We took care of business. Now we have to do it again Thursday.”

Rib Lake got its run on 10 hits. Freshman third baseman Andrew Wudi led the offense by going three for four with four runs batted in. Seven more players had one hit apiece.

Carter Scheithauer got the win with three innings pitched. Having thrown just 49 pitches, he would be available to work if needed today. He struck out five, walked two and allowed two runs and three hits. Michael Borchardt got two outs in the fourth and Jacob Matyka recorded the last four outs as the Redmen improved to 8-6 overall.

The offensive barrage actually started small. In the first, Sam Gumz led off with a walk, stole second and eventually scored on a Logan Blomberg groundout. Matyka walked in the second and, after two wild pitches, scored on Wudi’s first hit.

With help from the Loggers, Rib Lake ran out to an 11-0 lead in the third. The Redmen had four hits and took advantage of three walks, a hit batter and three errors. A six-run fourth made it 17-2. Borchardt and Ryan Patrick started that inning with walks. Wudi and Jackson Blomberg singled in runs. Gumz walked to load the bases and Brock Thiede delivered a two-run single. Jordan Yanko later walked with the bases loaded and Matyka was hit by a pitch to force in a run.

Ty Annala singled and Gumz walked in the fourth. Quednow drove in Annala with a hit and Logan Blomberg had another RBI groundout.

“The bottom of the order came through,” Iverson said. “I told Andrew here’s your chance and he went three for four. He and Jake Matyka got on six of seven times. Jackson Blomberg put the ball in play out of the nine spot.”

The two-game showdown with Athens starts Tuesday in Rib Lake and finishes June 3 in Athens. Both games are set to start at 4:45 p.m. If the Phillips game cannot be played today due to weather, Iverson said June 4 is being looked at as the make-up date.

Columbus 14, Rib Lake 4

A good non-conference game turned ugly in the top of the sixth inning when Columbus Catholic put up a 10-spot and sealed a 14-4 win over Rib Lake in a game that was moved to Marshfield Monday.

The decision to move to Marshfield turned out to be a wise one as heavy thunderstorms pounded the Medford/ Rib Lake area early in the evening. Not a drop fell in Marshfield.

Unfortunately, for the Redmen too many balls dropped in the top of the sixth and Columbus, playing as the visitors, took advantage.

“We gave up 10 and we should’ve got out of there with no runs scored,” Iverson said. “We had an error to start. Then we hit a guy. Then they had an infield single to load the bases. Twice we had a pop-up between the catcher and pitcher in foul territory and we didn’t get either one of them. They got a sacrifice fly to knock in a run, then we proceeded to walk in a couple. Then we had a couple of errors on a double play ball, we dropped another pop up.

“So we ended up going from a 4-4 game with all the momentum in the world to losing 14-4.”

Rib Lake had dug out of a very early 3-0 hole to tie it by the bottom of the fifth. In the bottom of the first, Gumz doubled, Thiede beat out an infield hit and both scored when Yanko slammed a triple to deep left-center.

The Dons scored one in the top of the second to go up 4-2. Rib Lake got an RBI groundout from Gumz in the fourth and back-to-back doubles from Yanko and Borchardt in the fifth.

Iverson was fairly pleased with the offense, which produced eight hits. Yanko was two for three with his extra-base hits. Gumz, Thiede, Logan Blomberg, Scheithauer, Borchardt and Jackson Blomberg had a hit apiece.

Aiming to keep everyone available for the games against Phillips, no one threw more than 30 pitches for the Redmen. Borchardt was hit with the three firstinning runs, two of which were earned. Matyka pitched two innings and gave up one run. Logan Blomberg threw two scoreless innings. Annala and Jackson Blomberg pitched the sixth.

“It’s better to happen during a nonconference game than a conference game,” Iverson said. “I was thrilled to get it in just because we hadn’t been on a field since Prentice (Thursday) and that game didn’t help us much because all we did was walk. Even though we had a bad inning it was good to just get back on the field and play a good team. Columbus had a nice team. They played good defense and threw strikes.”

Two easy wins

Rib Lake had no trouble last week in Marawood North games with Prentice, taking down the young and pitching-deprived Buccaneers 20-0 on Tuesday and 20-1 on Thursday.

In Rib Lake Tuesday, Rib Lake scored eight first-inning runs on just one hit. The Redmen drew five walks and had batters hit by pitches in the inning. They scored 12 runs in the third on six walks, three errors, a hit by pitch and three hits.

While scoring 20 runs, the Redmen had just five hits, including a two-run single by Quednow, two hits from Jackinning son Blomberg and one hit apiece by Yanko and Borchardt.

Borchardt and Annala combined on a five-inning no-hitter. Borchardt struck out four and walked one. Annala struck out three.

On Thursday in Prentice, Rib Lake scored 11 first-inning runs and coasted the rest of the way. The Redmen drew 11 walks in that inning, had one batter hit by a pitch and had just one hit.

That big start allowed Iverson to empty his bench quickly and get those players some solid game experience. Rib Lake scored seven more in the second for an 18-0 lead.

“They’re young and inexperienced,” Iverson said. “I give them credit for sticking with it and keeping their program going. Give them a couple years of playing and they’ll be OK.”

Logan Blomberg struck out seven and walked one in three scoreless innings. Jackson Blomberg pitched the last two innings. He walked four and allowed a hit and an earned run.

“It was good for Logan to get back out there and work on things,” Iverson said.

Offensively, Jackson Blomberg had two hits, Dalen Gebauer hit a two-run single and Patrick, Matyka and Thiede added hits.

“I was pleased because sometimes kids will get impatient and say I’m going to swing no matter what,” Iverson said. “We took 24 walks. They didn’t swing at bad pitches. When we got a strike we’d take a good swing at it. We just didn’t get many good pitches.”