Sports
Schneider and Co. stay hot, roll over Rolette 7-1
Matthew Semisch
07/01/2014
ROLETTE - It’s difficult to tell just how long Bottineau’s American Legion baseball team can hold onto the momentum currently going the group’s way.
Momentum can be like gold dust for any athlete. It boosts the quality of performances over an extended period of time, and Post 42 is proving itself to be a big beneficiary.
The most recent evidence of this came Thursday night in Rolette.
Bottineau was playing against the same Rolette team that handed Post 42 its only loss so far this season back on June 9. On Thursday, though, Post 42 ran roughshod in the teams’ third meeting of this American Legion season in winning by a 7-1 count.
The victory came in Bottineau’s first game under floodlights this season. It was also the eighth win in a row for Post 42, which is now 8-1 this season.
“That was another really good win for us,” Post 42 head coach Derek Aus said. “We did a lot of things right and had a few little mistakes here and there along the way, but it was important for us to put a lot of pressure on Rolette’s defense and we did that.”
Bottineau fell 10-6 to Rolette in Post 42’s first game of the season and a doubleheader that day. Post 42 bounced back in the rematch to win 10-5, however, and Bottineau hasn’t lost since that day.
Lee Schneider earned the win Thursday on the mound for Bottineau. The former Bottineau High and soon-to-be Dakota College at Bottineau (DCB) Lumberjack pitched seven and two-thirds innings and recorded 12 strikeouts.
Rolette’s only run of the night arrived with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning. Relief pitcher Kellen Lagerquist came on in that frame and posted five strikeouts of his own.
Schneider exuded plenty of confidence in his own game on Thursday, but he was also quick to praise the teammates around him.
“Everything just sort of all fell into place,” Schneider said after the game, which after a late start lasted until long after 11 p.m. on a very humid night.
“My arm felt really good today, and our defense and our bats definitely gave me more than enough support out there.”
“Lee Schneider had a really good game for us on the mound,” Aus said. “Probably the best pitching performance we’ve had from anyone so far this season.
“He was ahead in all of his counts and got people off-balance all night. He gets a lot of credit for what happened here tonight.”
Bottineau jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning on Thursday and never really let go.
Lead-off batter Andrew Hill was hit by a pitch before stealing second base. A single from Parker Engelhard, Post 42’s next batter up, pushed Hill up 180 feet and across home plate.
Bottineau then doubled its lead later in the inning with still nobody out. Brody Moum’s first of three base hits on the night drove Engelhard home to give the visitors a 2-0 advantage.
Third-inning runs from Moum and Ethan McCloud pushed Post 42’s lead to 4-0. Four then became five in the top of the fourth inning when Hill scored his second run of the day after stealing both second base and third before scoring on a wild pitch.
Lagerquist scored in the top of the fifth inning to make it 6-0 before Engelhard scored his second run of the night in the sixth inning.
Rolette’s lone run of the night, scored off a Bottineau error in the bottom of the seventh inning, proved little consolation.
Post 42 couldn’t restore its earlier seven-run lead over the rest of the scheduled nine-inning game. Bottineau didn’t have to, though, having settled the contest long before.
Aus was pleased with his team’s performance Thursday and said he hopes to see his team continue on the roll it’s currently enjoying.
"There’s some things we want to throw into our game so we can have a good July, too,” Aus said, “But they’ve been fun to work with, and they’re winning a bunch of games right now.”