KOKOMO — KOKOMO — Logansport’s 10-year-old All-Star baseball team had been dominant to start the summer.
The squad has opened by winning its first four tournaments, allowing just three runs en route to 14 straight wins to start the All-Star season. Logan outscored its district tournament opponents 33-2 in winning the championship last week.
On Thursday night here at Highland Park in a first-round game at the Cal Ripken Northern State Tournament, Logan had to find a way to win despite not playing its best ball against Schererville. The solution: Out-slug the opponent. Logan bashed out 19 hits and put pressure on the Schererville defense all night long in an 18-12 win.
“This was probably our ugliest win all year,” Logan manager Jon Loposser said. “We gave up more runs [Thursday] than we have in four tournaments. Defensively we need to go home and wash our gloves, like Coach said, get it out of there and come back. But we’re in the winner’s bracket and that’s what it takes over here.”
Logan trailed 9-5 after three innings before drawing to within 9-8 after four. In the top of the fifth Logan scored seven runs, all with two outs in the inning to take a 15-9 lead and control of the game.
Jacob Kelley drew a bases-loaded walk to give Logan a 10-9 lead, its first lead since the first inning. Tucker Platt followed with a two-run ground-rule double to right field to make it 12-9. Wil Bennett, who earlier left the game with an ankle injury after a collision at first, followed with a two-run single. Logan tacked on another run after an error, one of 13 in the game committed by Schererville.
In fact, Logan left 15 runners on base in the six-inning contest, so the score could have been even higher against Schererville, a town whose students feed into Lake Central High School.
Bryce Rhea got the win in relief of Platt. Rhea allowed just three runs (two earned) in 32⁄3 innings pitched.
“Schererville’s a travel team. They play a lot of games,” Loposser said. “Bryce Rhea came in and did a really, really good job. We asked Greg Korreckt, a teacher at Logan who played baseball for Logan, to come over and work with our pitchers. I give him a lot of credit. He taught Bryce Rhea a couple of changeups to throw for strikes, and he did that.
“We’ve got great pitching.”
Platt finished 4-for-4 with four RBIs and two runs scored to lead Logan at the plate. Rhea had two hits and four runs scored. Kelley had three hits including a double and three RBIs. Bennett had two hits and three RBIs.
Conner Corcoran had two hits and three runs scored, and Jacob Cox had two hits and two runs scored. Zach Russell and Jess McCarty each had a base hit and two runs scored. Rhea Burrage and Carson Loposser added a hit and run scored apiece.
“We go to the cage every day before we come over here, and it shows because our bats do the work for us,” Jon Loposser said. “We work these kids hard. We practice them like a high school team. We practice hard all week. We put two hours a night in every night. We come over here to win.”
Logan faces the Crown Point-Kokomo East Side winner at 6 p.m. tonight.
“Crown Point is the team to beat,” the Logan skipper said.
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