Lakeland’s sweep creates LVC separation
There might not be a whole lot of separation between the campuses of the two high schools along Bogie Lake Road — less than two miles, actually — but there’s a bit more separation in the Lakes Valley Conference baseball standings than there was entering Tuesday afternoon’s doubleheader.
Lakeland had a one-game lead over Walled Lake Northern in the loss column going into the twinbill, but expanded on it with wins of 17-12 and 9-2, giving themselves a bit of breathing room over everyone else in the jam-packed standings.
But they know that’s all it is — nothing’s sewn up, yet.
Especially because they’ve got to host Northern for the conclusion of the three-game series on Wednesday.
“Twenty-four league games is a haul. I remember a couple years ago, we were 21-0 going into last series, and didn’t have it sewn up. So, to me, that’s shows how competitive our league is, how deep it is. It’s a lot of fun,” said Lakeland coach Brad Farquhar. “I love the way our league’s set up with a three-game series on back-toback days, because you got to play a lot of baseball. Teams get to know each other well. You got to go deep into the pitching staff and it’s really hard to win three games right in a series in our league. I love it though.”
That’s perfectly illustrated by the first game of Tuesday’s twinbill, a game that everyone sort of thought would be a pitchers’ duel between Lakeland’s Tate Farquhar and Northern’s Sam Korus. It, in fact, was not.
The two teams combined for 29 runs on 26 hits and a brace full of errors.
Lakeland (12-7, 12-3 LVC) sent 12 batteries to the plate in the second inning, scoring eight runs for a 9-0 lead — with Farquhar’s tworun double the big blow in the inning — then pushed it to a 10-0 lead on Joey Swartz’s solo homer
in the top of the third.
Northern (11-10, 8-6 LVC) didn’t go quietly, though, sending 11 batters to the plate in a seven-run rally in the bottom of the third — highlighted by Caleb Shedlarski’s three run homer — to cut the football-sized deficit to a field goal.
“That’s the beauty of high school baseball, I guess: You never get too high or too low. And it is only two games. And it’s how you play tomorrow. So how do we how do we respond to this? How do we rebound? I thought we did a nice job rebounding offensively in Game 1. But we just we didn’t pitch well, today, we didn’t play defense well enough. And when you’re going up against a good team, you know, you can’t make … eight total errors in two games — you’re not gonna be too successful against most teams,” Northern coach Pete Lamerato said. “I think we can be better. I think we’ve got to we’ve got a lot of talent, but I tip my hat to Lakeland, they played a lot of intensity. Hopefully we bounce back. The rubber match is tomorrow, you know, so next day, next man up, and hopefully we can play well.”
The Knights got another run back in the fourth on a sacrifice fly by Nick Skiver to cut it to 10-8, but Lakeland responded with a fourrun fifth, highlighted by a Tate Farquhar two-run triple, with the Michigan State-bound senior coming around to score on the play, when the ball got away from the Knights at third base.
Back-to-back RBI singles by Tony Estrada and Skiver finished off a fourrun rally for Northern in the sixth, making it a 15-12 game, but Lakeland’s Matthew Hanneman finished off the scoring with a tworun homer in the seventh to pad the lead once again, and Trey Rowley shut the door with a 1-2-3 seventh on the mound.
“You know, I think we had 17 runs and 18 hits. And we had to manage the ball game like it was a one-run ball game, because of the way the game took course and things like that. But our kids did a great job staying with it. Got up 10-0, you know, they got a few — we responded,” Brad Farquhar said. “It’s always your hope that maybe you can save some pitches on some arms in a three-game series like we play in our league, but it’s baseball. We’re pretty deep in our staff, so we feel good about where we’re at.”
Brandon Lengers certainly helped the Lakeland staff get back on track, throwing a complete game in the nightcap, which was called after six innings, due to darkness. He gave up just two runs — on a third-inning RBI double and a fifth-inning RBI single Ty Stepek, who the Eagles had plunked twice and intentionally walked once in Game 1 — on seven hits, striking out one.
Brandon Abray’s RBI double got Lakeland out to a 1-0 lead in the first inning of Game 2, then Swartz had an RBI single and Abray a walk with the bases loaded to make it 3-0 after two.
Lakeland batted around in the third, making it 7-0 with an RBI single by Nolan Hull, a bases-loaded walk to Swartz and an RBI groundout by Abray.
Hanneman scored on a fourth-inning throwing error to make it 8-1, then Farquhar had a bloop double, stole third and scored on a wild pitch in the sixth.