Rib Lake’s solid summer continues with Monday sweep of Medford

NEWS

Rib Lake improved to 7-2 in its summer baseball season Monday by sweeping Medford Post 147’s Junior Legion team in a pair of five-inning games played at Tannery Creek Parkway.

The first one was tight with Talon Scheithauer outpitching Hayden Strebig in a matchup of projected aces for next year’s high school teams. Rib Lake got two runs in each of the first two innings to build a 4-1 lead and held on from there.

Game two was not nearly as close as Rib Lake led 12-0 before Medford got on the board in the last inning to make the final score look a bit better at 12-4.

Scheithauer limited Medford to four hits in the opener while striking out seven and walking two. One of the runs was earned.

Strebig had some command issues early, which cost him, but he settled in late in the short contest. He struck out four in four innings and allowed four hits and four runs. Three of the four walks he allowed came in the first inning, plus he hit a batter. That traffic on the base paths allowed Rib Lake to take a 2-1 lead on successful double steals.

That came after Medford got its firstinning run while successfully pulling off a first-and-third steal. Broden Schilling stayed in a rundown long enough to allow Strebig to score.

Scheithauer then had the game’s big hit in the bottom of the second, lacing a twoout, two-run double to deep left-center, scoring Josiah Mann, who had singled, and Slade Scheithauer, who had walked.

Evan Czarnezki’s sacrifice fly in the third got Medford within two, but the visitors got no closer.

Ty Niemi and Blake Henderson had hits for Rib Lake. Strebig was two for two with a double and a walk and Austin Czarnezki had two hits out of the nine-spot for Medford.

Game two was a tough one for Medford’s pitchers and Rib Lake took full advantage.

Conor Anderson got the start and lasted five batters, walking two, hitting two and allowing a sacrifice fly to Brevin Brahmer. Ace Arndt relieved him. A walk and two errors compounded the inning, which ended with Rib Lake leading 6-0.

Talon Scheithauer doubled in between three walks to start the second. Nick Krause relieved Arndt and issued two walks and a Ty Niemi helped get the lead to 10-0. Austin Czarnezki took over and allowed an RBI single to Jack Jensen making it 11-0, but he also got Slade Scheithauer to ground into an inningending double play.

Czarnezki wound up settling things down, working through two hits and two hit batters in the third while only allowing a run on a Henderson single and then pitching a scoreless fourth.

Slade Scheithauer threw four scoreless innings for Rib Lake, striking out five and walking one on three hits. Medford sent 10 men to the plate against Niemi in the fifth. Evan Czarnezki and Schilling drove in runs with groundouts, Krause hit an RBI single and a run scored on an error on a fly ball hit by Sawyer Elsner.

Strebig had two hits with a double for Medford. Slade Scheithauer had two hits for Rib Lake.

Swept Park Falls

On June 30, Rib Lake easily swept a pair of five-inning home games with Park Falls.

The visitors scored twice in the top of the first inning in game one, but got nothing after that in Rib Lake’s 13-2 win. Rib Lake took the game over with a fourrun first and a seven-run rally in the second inning. Seth Borchardt got the pitching win with five strikeouts, four walks and three hits allowed.

Borchardt drove in the first run for Rib Lake with a double. Ethan Cook and Niemi had RBI singles in the first inning as well. Slade Scheithauer singled in a run, Ethan Cook doubled in two and Lucas Cook doubled in one more in the big second inning. Henderson had a two-run single in the fourth to cap the scoring.

Ethan Cook had three hits while Slade Scheithauer and Lucas Cook had two each.

Ethan Cook threw a no-hitter in game two, a 12-0 win. He hit the first batter of the game, then proceeded to strike out seven. He walked two.

The offense again took care of business early, scoring three runs in the first, highlighted by a two-run single from Brahmer, and six runs in the second. Talon Scheithauer had a couple of hits. Everyone in the batting order got on base one way or another in the win.