Jeff Johnson

Left-handed starter Cade Obermueller threw seven four-hit shutout innings, striking out 10 to lift Iowa past Rutgers, 4-3, in a Big Ten Conference Baseball Tournament pool game Wednesday night. The Hawkeyes have clinched a spot in Saturday night’s semifinals against UCLA

The University of Iowa baseball team went 1-8-1 in its final 10 games of the regular season, swept last week by Oregon in a series that determined the Big Ten Conference winner. The Hawkeyes begin play Wednesday at the Big Ten Conference tournament in Omaha, Neb. It’s a tournament that has expanded to 12 teams and employs a unique new format.

Outfielder Gabriel Gonzalez has always been known as a good hitter. A back issue last season with the Cedar Rapids Kernels prevented him from showing that. But he’s healthy this season and hitting a ton the first month and a half of the Midwest League season.

This big Big Ten Conference regular-season ending series in Iowa City this weekend went the way of Oregon on Thursday night. The fifth-ranked Ducks hit four home runs and got stellar pitching in a 10-0, 7-inning pounding of Iowa.

Dwight Gingerich is leaving Hillcrest Academy after 43 seasons as boys’ basketball coach to becoming head men’s basketball coach and athletics director at Goshen College in Indiana. Gingerich is fourth all-time in the state in career victories and a IHSAA Hall of Famer.

Shortstop Kaelen Culpepper was the first-round pick (21st overall) of the Minnesota Twins last summer out of Kansas State. He has flashed his skills in the early going for the Cedar Rapids Kernels in between injuries, including one Wednesday in a 7-6, 11-inning loss to Peoria.

Iowa Heartlanders head coach and general manager Derek Damon will leave the ECHL hockey club to take over as head coach and president of hockey operations of the Des Moines Buccaneers of the junior United States Hockey League. Damon was an assistant coach for Iowa in its inaugural season of 2021-22, taking over at head coach/GM in the summer of 2022. The Heartlanders and Bucs both are owned by New York businessman Michael Devlin

Mitchell Eckardt of Coe College tore the ACL in his knee late in the Kohawks’ 2024 football season. But he held off surgery so he could play one final baseball season as a fifth-year senior. Coe was eliminated from the American Rivers Conference tournament Saturday afternoon by Nebraska Wesleyan with a ninth-inning rally, 6-5.

Pitcher Alejandro Hidalgo of the Cedar Rapids Kernels was part of a trade that sent him from the Los Angeles Angels to the Minnesota Twins organization in 2022. He missed all of last season with a shoulder injury but has returned and shown big league stuff.

Buena Vista’s baseball team beat Coe three times last weekend to win the American Rivers Conference regular-season championship. The Beavers made it a four-game win streak against the Kohawks via a 3-0 victory Friday afternoon at the ARC tournament at Veterans Memorial Stadium. Starting pitcher Mark Eddie threw a complete-game four-hitter.

The Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team can boost its RPI the next two weeks with a series this weekend against top-10 Oregon State at Principal Park in Des Moines and next week at home against Oregon. Iowa has one Big Ten Conference series left and is in first place by a game.

The United States Hockey League has concluded the two phases of its 2025 draft. In Tuesday’s Phase II, the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders selected winger Cade Sherman of Rosemount High School in Minnesota. He’s the son of Matt Sherman, who started three years as the University of Iowa football team in the 1990s.

Running back Max White announced over the weekend on social media that he is transferring to play college football at the University of Wyoming. The Cedar Rapids Kennedy graduate played four years for the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Cedar Rapids Kernels catcher-first baseman-designated hitter Nate Baez didn’t get a whole lot of playing time in the first week or two of the Midwest League season. But he got four hits in a game he did play in, he continued to follow up that performance with more good performances and now he finds himself with a .353 batting average and more walks than strikeouts while playing most days.

Here is your second look at how Eastern Iowans and former University of Iowa baseball players are doing in the early going of the 2025 Major League Baseball and minor league seasons.