AURORA – The Hiawatha Hawks faced little resistance from the Chicago Harper Cardinals in their 27-0 victory in the Class 1A Aurora Christian Regional semifinal Thursday. The teams decided to end the game after three innings.
The Hawks waited for pitches to hit and capitalized on the Cardinals’ difficulty fielding the ball to put up 19 runs in the first inning.
“Our goal is we don’t want to be that team that runs up the score, so once it got to 10-0 we put on the brakes,” Hiawatha coach Nathan Hoffman said.
The Hawks (11-10) started easing up on the Cardinals (7-5) when they realized the game was getting out of hand.
Hiawatha stopped running on wild pitches and only took one base on fielding errors and hits after the game was clearly won.
“We’ve been on both sides of [a blowout] plenty of times my entire four years of high school,” senior Jacob Edwards said. “Teams that go up there and try to pound the ball when they’re up by so much, I’ve always hated those teams. I never thought that as a player or a team it was a good way to represent yourself.”
The Hawks did get some positives out of this game as their top pitchers got some well-needed rest going into the regional championship game Saturday.
“We came out of this better than we expected,” Hoffman said. “With us jumping out to that early lead, I was able to get my No. 2 [pitcher] out, so that we have our No. 1 and No. 2 available for Saturday.”
While the offense was patient, the pitching was dominant.
Hawks pitcher Ty Kilcullen gave up a single up the middle in the second inning, but struck out the next three batters on 10 pitches.
The only highlight for the Cardinals came on an over-the-shoulder catch by freshman Jy’Shawn Coleman off a John Collins pop fly in the second inning.
“When we are at the point when we can’t reach the win, let’s just have fun playing the most beautiful game in the world, which is baseball,” Harper coach Gary McClellan said.
By the numbers: Hiawatha’s opponent in the regional championship game, Aurora Christian, also won by a lopsided score. It beat Chicago Leo, 23-1, in the other regional semifinal game.
Beyond the stats: Hiawatha last played in a regional championship in 2014 and is looking for its first regional championship since 2013.
They said it: “The next two days we are going to be really focused,” Edwards said. “It’s definitely going to be a much harder game on Saturday, but we are up for it.”
Up next: Hiawatha takes on Aurora Christian in the Class 1A Aurora Christian Regional final at Waubonsee Community College at 11 a.m. Saturday.