On April 25, Park faced off against New Prague at home. New Prague came out swinging, eventually beating Park 7-1, leaving the Orioles with a 3-4 record on the season.
Head coach Brian Kelly said the team’s pitching did well despite the amount of runs scored, praising two players- Jacob Martenson and Ryan Moran.
“Ryan Moran and Jacob Martenson did a really good job. That the New Prague team scored 27 runs in their last two games combined,” Kelly said. “Martenson and Moran kept them to four earned runs today. So Martenson and Moran gave us a chance to win, we just didn’t hit very well. Pitching is something that we did well today.”
Senior Josh Middleton said the team’s pitching did good, but they need to work on their hitting.
“The pitchers pitched well, even if it says we lost seven to one. Pitchers only let up four earned runs, so not too bad,” Middleton said. “We need to get the bats going (and) work on offense, hitting and having more competitive at bats to win if we keep up the pitching.”
Senior Tegan Goodman said the team needs to get their bats going if they want to keep up and win more games.
“The hitting really killed us today; we went really deep in counts and just couldn’t fight off,” Goodman said. “If we want to win more games, we have to keep battling in those at-bats and at least try to get a walk or a single, anything to get on base.”
Kelly said the team needs to work on their hitting approach but he needs to prepare the offense better too.
“Offensive approach, as a coach, I can do better at getting them ready for that. It’s not all them,” Kelly said. “We’ve got to do a much better job, be ready to hit and have a little bit better discipline plan at the plate.”
Goodman said the team plans to make it far in sections, but they need to pace themselves for a long season.
“We think we’re gonna make it pretty deep into sections but we just gotta take it one game at a time,” Goodman said. “It’s a long season, so it was a tough game today after three games in a row in three days.”
Park baseball’s next game is against Southwest at 4:30 p.m. April 29 at Southwest High School.
