Iowa City Liberty plays top-seeded Johnston tough again before falling in Class 4A state baseball tournament quarterfinals

IOWA CITY — Being in the state baseball tournament two years in a row is great. That’s something that can’t be denied.

But for Iowa City Liberty, it’s time to do more than just make the tournament. The next step is to win a game here.

Or two. Or three.

“I feel like for the future of Liberty baseball, that’s definitely something that’s going to happen,” Liberty’s Jayden Khamphilanouvong said, after Johnston beat the Lightning, 9-3, Tuesday afternoon in a Class 4A quarterfinal at Banks Field. “We’re going to have a lot of returning people on our team next year. The future, we’re going to hopefully break through that barrier of the first round and try to do great things next year.”

In many ways, this was just a repeat of a year ago.

Liberty was around a .500 team record wise that got hot in the postseason and made the state tourney as an eighth seed. The quarterfinal opponent was the same as last year.

The game played out pretty similarly as well. The Lightning got some shots in early, hung around and hung around before ultimately succumbing.

“This is the standard,” said Liberty’s Luke Mayer. “Get back here every year. That’s the standard now.”

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Photos: Iowa City Liberty vs. Johnston in state baseball quarterfinals

“Our guys weren’t nervous at all. They were confident,” said Liberty Coach Uby Martinez. “The practices (leading into this game) were phenomenal. So I think this is just the expectation right now. They see that there is a method to it. It takes a little bit of luck, a lot of execution, a lot of preparation. I think they see that now.”

Liberty (23-18) took the lead in the top of the second when Mason Gardner walked leading off and scored on Mayer’s double into the left-field corner. Johnston (34-8) tied it in the bottom of the inning, and that’s how things stayed until the bottom of the fourth.

Four straight hits to start the inning scored three runs, with another coming home before Liberty could put out the Dragons’ fire. Another run in the fifth made it a 5-1 game.

“Just came out and did the job,” said Johnston’s Sam Kemmer. “I think we just build off each other really well as a team (offensively). One person gets a hit, and it just snowballs. We keep going.”

Kemmer had three RBIs in the game. Sam Hesselman went 3-for-3 with two runs and an RBI.

Will Nuss also went 3-for-3. Hesselman, Nuss and Kemmer bat 5-6-7 in the order. Pretty good production from the lower half of the lineup.

Liberty crawled within 6-3 on pinch-hitter Khamphilanouvong’s two-run single in the sixth, but Johnston countered with three runs in the bottom half. The Lightning didn’t make it easy for Johnston ace starting pitcher Carter Woollums, scoring three runs against a guy who came in with a 1.34 earned run average and had allowed just 25 hits in 52 1/3 innings.

“We had good ABs throughout the lineup,” Mayer said. “Credit to Woollums. He’s really, really good, going to do a lot of big things. We just did what we could.”

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