NORTH ROBINSON — After a slow start, the Colonel Crawford Eagles are getting their baseball legs under them.
Behind the complete-game, one-hit pitching of Gavin Feichtner, the Eagles blanked previously-undefeated Mohawk, 9-0, in a Northern 10 Athletic Conference game at Marion E. Althouse Field.
“Gavin’s gotten better every game,” Colonel Crawford coach Dan Gorbett said. “Being on the basketball team, he’s had a little bit of a slow start. Every outing, he’s gotten better and better.”
The Eagles’ bats and some shaky Warriors’ defense supplied more than enough offense to support Feichtner’s gem.
In the second, a Mohawk error led to an unearned run. Gavin’s younger brother and battery mate, Carson Feichtner drove in the run.
“We had some opportunities to make plays and get out of innings and we didn’t make them, some ground balls that we have to make plays on and get outs,” Mohawk coach Eric Hoover said. “We could have gotten out of some innings earlier than we did. It just added up.”
Colonel Crawford (4-4, 3-3 N10) put the game away in the third, again with some assistance the Mohawk (6-1, 3-1) defense.
The Eagles scored four runs on just two hits in the frame. The Warriors committed two more errors and the pitching issued two walks. The Feichtner brothers each drove in a run with singles and Drayton Burkhart plated one with a ground ball on which he was also safe on an error.
“We made good contact (at the plate),” Gorbett said. “I was very pleased. We had a lot of batting practice since Saturday. We’ve got a tough week this week. Hopefully, we’re on an upward trend now.”
Whatever the offense produced, the story on this day was Gavin Feichtner and his pitching.
“He pitched very well, and he kept us off balance,” Hoover said. “We knew it was going to be tough to score runs. We had trouble just like we did (Friday) against them. You’ve got to take advantage of your opportunities on defense to keep the game close.”
The Eagles added a run in the fifth on an RBI ground out by Caleb Lohr and tacked on three insurance runs in the sixth when they bunched four singles by Kade Hamilton, Trevin Fairchild, Gavin Feichtner and Daylen Balliet with a walk and a hit batter.
Mohawk’s lone hit was a clean leadoff single to right-centerfield by Trey Combs in the fourth. The Warriors’ only other base runners were off three walks and one Colonel Crawford error.
“They were (6-0) coming into this game and swept South Central over the weekend,” Gorbett said. “After losing 1-0 in the 11th inning (on Friday), that’s a tough loss. I was proud of the kids bouncing back and winning.”
Gavin Feichtner and Carson Feichtner each had two hits, with Gavin scoring once and Carson driving in two to lead the Eagles. Kade Hamilton singled and scored twice, while Ethan Studer, Drayton Burkhart, Mason McKibben, Brock Ritzhaupt and Dylan Cooke all singled once. All but Ritzhaupt and McKibben also scored a run.
Feichtner struck out eight and walked three en route to his one-hit shutout.
Tanner Osborn absorbed the loss on the mound for the Warriors, going five innings with two strikeouts, four walks and nine hits. Three of the nine runs he surrendered were unearned.
“We had a really good defensive game against them on Friday,” Hoover said. “But we’ve had some trouble with errors in other games. We just were fortunate enough to score more runs in those games, one more than them, usually.”
“I’m really pleased with where we’re at,” Gorbett said. “We’re just getting better each time we take the field and that’s all you can ask of the kids.”
“It’s something we have to do a better job of cleaning up and making some of those plays,” Hoover said. “We’re athletic enough to make them. We’re just not making them right now.”
Box score
Mohawk 000 000 0 0 1 4
Colonel Crawford 014 013 X 9 10 1
WP: Gavin Feichtner (8 SO 3 W)
LP: Tanner Osborn (2 SO, 4 W)
HR: None.
Triples: None.
Doubles: None.
Multiple hits: (CC) Gavin Feichtner, Carson Feichtner.
Records: Mohawk 6-1 (3-1 N10); Colonel Crawford 4-4 (3-3 N10).
Next: Carey at Mohawk, Wednesday; Wynford at Colonel Crawford, Wednesday.