August 4, 2017 at 4:59 p.m.
Snowhawks pound Coaching All-Stars
Snowhawks pound Coaching All-Stars
After struggling to hit the ball consistently during the losing streak, Lake Tomahawk hit well for the second consecutive week. The defense was also shored up, featuring several diving catches during a 19-10 win.
The Coaching All-Stars, comprised of coaches from Lakeland Union High School and local youth coaches, did not record a hit during the first three innings, allowing the Snowhawks to break it open during the middle innings.
"We instituted something new," Snowhawks assistant coach Craig Holmquist said. "We have a little bit of incentive not to make mistakes. We have a fine situation if you commit an error. When I hold up a five signal on the sidelines, it means you gave five bucks to the team. Two games in a row our errors have gone way down. This game had no significant errors so we've really turned it around since the three losses we had a few weeks ago."
Lake Tomahawk got on the board first, scoring two runs in the bottom of the first inning on three consecutive hits by Ryan Schowalter, Cole Punches and Derek Young, with the first two scoring runs.
The Coaching All-Stars finally got their first hit of the game in the top of the fourth inning on a lead-off single by LUHS varsity baseball coach Mike Wilhelm. Two batters later, LUHS football and baseball assistant coach Matt Krueger singled. Two batters after that so did Tim Ryden, tying the game.
The tie didn't last long as the Snowhawks exploded in the bottom of the inning, getting hits and capitalizing on errors as they totaled the first of back-to-back 5-run frames.
Todd Niemuth, Brent Cella, Nick Mertz, Billy Kuckahn and Eric Hilmer scored runs in the fourth, while Punches, Young, James Schmidt, Niemuth and Cella scored in the fifth as Lake Tomahawk combined for 11 hits in the two innings.
The Snowhawks scored two more in the sixth to take a 14-2 lead. They would increase the lead to 16-3 in the seventh on a 2-run home run by Cella. Lake Tomahawk also tacked on three more in the bottom of the eighth.
The Coaching All-Stars started to get their offense going in the final three innings of the game. Lakeland varsity football coach Dan Barutha scored a run, as did Krueger in the eighth, before finally breaking out in the top of the ninth.
Six hits led to five runs by Adam Bremer, Dominic Caroselli, Wade Wentland, Wilhelm and Barutha for the Coaching All-Stars, but it wasn't enough to complete the comeback.
Some of the coaches - like Bremer - are veterans of snowshoe baseball, but some had never played before.
"Honestly I thought running in the snowshoes was going to be my biggest problem. I was just trying not to trip my first few innings," Barutha said. "But we did pretty well."
The Snowhawks now look to win a third game in a row on Monday against Town Pump.
To have a three-game winning streak heading into the Aug. 14 matchup against D and R Bombers would be huge for Lake Tomahawk.
"They're going to bring some guys who play a lot, so it's not going to be an easy week," Holmquist said. "We have to continue to get our base hits, we have to continue to stop the errors and we've had a lot of fun the last two weeks. After the three losses the team was negative and down. We lost some of the joy of playing this because we've never lost three in a row, but we came back and most of the game everybody's into it. So I think we've turned it around."
The Snowhawks will host Town Pump at 7:30 p.m. Monday.
Nick Sabato may be reached at [email protected] or via Twitter @SabatoNick.
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