The day was April 23, 2015 and it was the early part of the season for the Blaine Bengals Freshman B team’s season. They came into this game with a 2-2 record. They are on a 2 game losing streak after starting the season with 2 strong victories. It was a chilly 52 degrees with the wind blowing at 7 mph. One of the Bengals better players, Andrew Jorgenson(12) was not able to play in this game because he was on a family vacation in Mexico. But the sun was still shining and the kids were ready to show what they were made of.

They stormed out on the field to warm up before the first pitch. The Bengals came out with a lot of energy with Zach Ericson starting on the hill. Unfortunately so did the Elks bats. They scored multiple runs in the first couple of innings and it felt like a huge gap to overcome for the Bengals.

But they were fighting with hits of their own. Joe Komm(26) went 2-2 hitting to keep his strong season going, Nick Schieck(15) went 2-4 with 2 Runs Batted In. Schieck was also on the hill where he pitched two innings, unfortunately he walked a lot of kids. “The umpire was pissing me off, he called pitches that were way too high strikes when we were hitting but not when they were.”

The Bengals got alot of their energy back from a big triple hit in the 4th inning by Jake Poundstone. By the later innings the Bengals thought that they had the game in the bag but with Nick Grote on the mound the Elks bats that were red hot in the first inning came back to life and they started to rock the ball again, by the time the 12th run had scored for the Elks, it had seemed clear to the Bengals that they had been defeated, their heads were down but the fans tried to keep them up. A nearby neighbor who comes to most of the games was still heckling the other team with his chants like “SEND THEM BACK TO THE FIELDS THEY CAME FROM.” But for the Elks, they would be going back to their fields with happy faces and most importantly, the W.

The game unfortunately ended in a 9-12 loss for the Blaine Bengals 9b baseball team. This game brought their record down to below .500 at 2-3 but there are still high hopes for the bengals with a lot of the season remaining for them there is only room for them to improve. Hopefully they can get out of their losing streak on Friday, April 24, against the Coon Rapids Cardinals at Coon Rapids High School.