The run ends for North-Linn

DES MOINES - Ryan Miller looked like a prize fighter who came out on the wrong end of a heavyweight boxing match. In a way, he had.

The North-Linn freshman was sporting a significant bandage under his chin postgame Thursday afternoon, courtesy of a bunt attempt gone wrong. He tried to sacrifice and got an unexpected breaking ball in on his hands that deflected off his bat and straight to his face.

The Lynx ended up dropping their Class 1A state baseball tournament semifinal to Pleasantville, 6-3, at Principal Park. Call it a double whammy.

'We just had too many mistakes offensively and defensively today.” Miller said.

'It got to a point where we didn't make plays,” agreed North-Linn Coach Travis Griffith. 'We got a little rattled there, and that was part of our youth finally showing. We've been able to play through that, to be honest. The mistakes we made today, they capitalized on them. Hats off to them. They did to us what we've been doing to other teams. Wait for that mistake and jump on it.”

Pleasantville (35-3), which plays Mason City Newman (38-4) in Saturday morning's championship game, won for the 28th consecutive time. The Trojans scored in each of the first five innings, taking the lead for good in the third.

Starting pitcher Miller walked seven in three-plus innings. Logan Novak relieved him after a walk leading off the fourth and gave up winning pitcher Zeb Adreon's two-run home run to right.

It's the only longball of the tournament thus far.

'We put too many guys on base and weren't able to get out of jams,” Griffith said.

North-Linn (35-11) stunned unbeaten Van Buren in last Saturday's quarterfinals, with ace Jake Hilmer pitching all eight innings. Considering the eighth-grader, who had an earned run average under 1.00, did that and had thrown 83.1 innings this season, Griffith deemed him unavailable Thursday.

'Coach asked me how I was feeling as the week went on,” said Hilmer, who went 1-for-3 with a run and RBI at shortstop. 'I'd thrown a lot of pitches Saturday night, I've thrown a lot of pitches this season and postseason. It's kind of one of those things where I'm in eighth grade, have four more years left. I didn't want to do anything too much ... Plus, we had our best defense out there.”

'He was tired, I could tell when he was throwing yesterday,” Griffith said. 'I shouldn't have thrown him that much Saturday, that was my fault. Then I really couldn't come back with him without an extended rest. He probably wouldn't have thrown at all (in the championship game), to be honest with you.”

Despite Thursday's disappointment, it was an incredible season for North-Linn, which advanced to state for the first time, and had just 13 players on its roster, including three eighth-graders, four freshmen and three sophomores.

'It was a heck of an experience,” said catcher Jacob Rawson, one of three seniors. 'I never thought I'd make it to state, especially the semifinals. I didn't think I'd make it to the state semifinals in anything. Just a heck of an experience.”

'We accomplished more than we probably thought we could at the beginning of the season,” Hilmer said. 'Once you get down here, you start to see that maybe we could do something, maybe we are a name that people are going to know. I think if you had told us this was where we were going to end our season, we'd have been pretty happy with that. But right now, it's pretty tough.”

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