The varsity baseball team beat Kearney to win the Heartland Athletic Conference Tournament (HAC) on Wednesday, April 13. The Hawks beat the Bearcats with a final score of 6-3 in a contest that didn’t end till almost midnight. 

Senior Jack Shaffer started on the mound in the championship game. He went four innings with seven strikeouts. 

“I just knew I had to do a job and do it for the team,” Shaffer said. “In the East, game senior Blake (Waring) shut them down which made our hitting stand out.” 

Sophomore pitcher Thomas Fraley came in for relief after Shaffer where he went three innings with six strikeouts to secure the team the win. 

“I didn’t have much pressure on me. I heard their chirping so I just had to make sure that didn’t get to me,” Fraley said. “I thought my curve ball was working really well. I was able to get my fastball past them pretty easily, so I stayed with that a lot.” 

The team tallied eight hits to go along with their 13 strikeouts. 

The team made it to the semi-final game after earning wins over Lincoln High and Fremont and Tuesday, April 12. The squad took on Lincoln East at Den Hartog at 2:00 p.m. to make a run to the championship. After facing a 7-0 deficit, the team overcame the struggle by winning the game 10-9 in extra innings. Waring threw six innings with 100 pitches. 

“I just wanted to go in and throw strikes and give our team a chance to win,” Waring said. “We took it one inning at a time and all the guys were chipping away.” 

The semi-final game didn’t get over till 5:00 p.m. with another semi final matchup with Kearney squaring off against Lincoln Southeast directly after. Kearney took the victory to advance them to the championship. The championship had a 9:15 p.m. start time. 

“I’m just so proud of the guys,” head coach Mitch Vernon said. “They worked their tails off and deserved to win this thing.”