White’s HR lifts Westpast Cougars

CEDAR RAPIDS - He admitted to not exactly being the calmest.“Oh, I was very nervous that at-bat,” Eric White admitted.He didn't show it. The Iowa City West outfielder smoked a ball over the center-field fence with one out in the bottom of the eighth inning for a two-run home run that gave his team a 5-3 win over Cedar Rapids Kennedy in a wonderful Class 4A substate semifinal prep baseball game last night at Kennedy.The hit moves West (27-15) on to a substate final Wednesday night at Burlington and within one game of the state tournament. Call White nervous, but clutch.“He threw a curveball low the pitch before the home run,” White said of Kennedy reliever Ryan Dusil's 2-1 pitch. “The next pitch I was looking fastball, and that's what he gave me right down the middle. I just got it, I guess.”“Whitey just centered one,” said West Coach Charlie Stumpff. “He's a big, strong kid, and he got one.”West finally got one, even though it looked for a while like it wasn't going to. Kennedy (27-14) rallied for two runs in the top of the seventh to tie the game and had the go-ahead run thrown out at the plate.Griffin Michael's one-out bases-loaded single over the second baseman's head plated Andy Petersen and Derek Thomas. Thomas slid around catcher Neil Madsen's tag attempt after he caught a strong throw from right fielder Tommy Heinrich slightly up the third-base line.Heinrich then threw out pinch runner David Yancey at the plate on a flyball to shallow-medium right off the bat of Bryan Bruner. “I thought I had him the first time,” Heinrich said. “I got another chance. It was nice to get them back.”A two-run homer, his first of the season, by Ryan Rumpf gave West a 3-1 lead in the third. A Kennedy threat to tie in the sixth went awry thanks to a major baserunning snafu.With a runner on first and one out, Tyler Kalb hit a drive off the center-field fence and sprinted around second and toward third. But base runner Devon Jacobus had stopped after he rounded third and was eventually tagged out in a rundown at the plate, with Kalb going back to second.Kennedy didn't score.“I just didn't do a very good job at third base (coaching) tonight coordinating what we were doing offensively,” said Kennedy Coach Bret Hoyer, choosing not to say if Jacobus was originally waved home on the play. “I left way too many runs on the field. I needed to do a better job of getting kids into position to score runs that were out there.”