Granville Spalding will bid for a sixth state championship on Saturday. The seventh rated Spartans beat number eight Nora Springs-Rock Falls 6-3 to advance to the 1A title game. They will match up with a Kee High team that have played three previous times in the championship. Spalding coach Bill Wuebker says they lost to Kee in 1992 when he was an assistant coach and then they beat them in 2000. Wuebker says he doesn’t talk about revenge because all the players are different. He says he just hopes its a good ballgame.
Spalding jumped out to a 2-0 lead at the end of one and Wuebker says quick starts have been the exception as of late. He says they’ve always had trouble getting the other team out right away, then they did that and scored right away, which he was big.
Top ranked Wilton advanced to the class 2A championship but their semifinal round game against North Polk was still a shocker. The Beavers took advantage of 11 North Polk errors and scored 10 runs in the third inning in a 17-0 victory. Wilton pitcher Wes Freie who earned the victory to improve to 12-0 on the season says he could never imagine they’d win by such a margin. He says he’s sure North Polk doesn’t make errors on that like a regular basis. The Beavers will take a 41-0 record into the championship game. Freie says its been a dream for them for a long time and he hopes they can win the championship. Wilton sent 14-batters to the plate in the third inning and 11 more in a seven run fourth. North Polk coach Dave Middleton says he doesn’t have an explanation for it, saying it could be a culmination of the pressure of the game. He says at some point every team has a bad game. The Comets finish the season 31-6.
In the other 2-A semifinal, Quinn O’Brien’s RBI single to right snapped a one-all tie in the top of the ninth an second ranked Carroll Kuemper went on to down ninth rated Cherokee 5-1. There were several big plays in the game. The Knights cut down a Cherokee squeeze bunt at the plate in the bottom of the seventh that would have ended the game. Cherokee ends the season with a record of 25-6.