All Mid-Prairie junior varsity baseball …

By Mark Adkins

“Just wanted to keep winning ways going” Loria

All Mid-Prairie junior varsity baseball coach Jeremy Loria wanted to do is keep M-P’s winning ways in JV action “going.”

He took that one step further this season as his team clinched the 1999 Eastern Iowa Hawkeye Conference title with a split against Iowa City Regina last Friday.

“When I came here, coach Sauer told me that the JV had had winning seasons in the last four years,” Loria said. “I felt I had to keep that string going.”

His Golden Hawks finished the season with a glittering 19-5 overall mark and 12-1 conference mark. They ended their season with a rousing 10-4 win over the Regals as Travis Kleinschmidt went two for four, tripled and scored twice, Courtney Driscol went two for three with a home run, triple and two runs scored as well as pitching the team to the win and Ryan Swartzendruber was two for three with two runs scored. Adam Swartzendruber also came in with a double and a triple, while Derrick Yoder finished with two doubles.

Regina won the opener 5-2 Friday, despite Tyler Grout’s two for three outing at the plate.

“We were hoping for 500, but these guys got going early in the season and it just built from there,” Loria said. “The guys just kept on playing better and better each time out.”

The rest of the last week for the JV saw an 11-8 loss to Tri-County of Thornburg last Thursday, a sweep of Mount Vernon 5-3 and 15-1 July 5 as Adam Rath doubled and scored twice in the opener and Tyler Griffith, Kleinschmidt and Driscol each scored three runs in the nightcap and a 10-7, 9-1 sweep of Washington July 6. Brandon TeBockhorst scored twice in the opener, while Rath had a huge night with three triples in the two games combined.