The Arlington Senior Legion baseball team entered the B3 Area Tournament on a month-long drought.
Due to inactivity and four-straight losses, the Post 71 Eagles hadn't won a game since June 21.
“Area is just a new season, basically,” catcher Braden Monke said after his ballclub broke out of its slump Friday afternoon. Arlington beat Waterloo-Valley during the first round at Elkhorn Mount Michael, 6-1.
“It just gets us some confidence going into the rest of the games,” outfielder Killian McIntosh said. “It was Valley and that's our rival. It just makes it that much better.”
The next day, Saturday, the Eagles played Wahoo and lost, 8-0. The five-inning, run-rule defeat sent Post 71 into a Sunday afternoon elimination game against Fort Calhoun. Results will appear in Friday's Arlington Citizen and Washington County Enterprise editions.
The runs piled up quick during the Wahoo defeat. Down 3-0 through four frames, the Eagles' opposition scored five times in the fifth to end the postseason game early.
“Walk, walk and kid got ahold of one,” Arlington coach Tyler Stender said. “It happens.”
After Wahoo hit an infield single and walked twice to load the bases, it hit a two-RBI single. That set up the three-run homer over the right field fence that ended it.
Pitcher Tyler Ott took the loss.
“Tyler's been our dude all year and he just wasn't as quite as sharp as he's been — he knew that,” Stender said. “But, at that point in the game, we kind of had to leave him out there to save pitching.”
The coach said he was confident in Sunday's starter with the season on the line against Post 348.
“We know Fort Calhoun pretty well, so it'll be fun to see them as our last game or their last game,” he said.
Against Waterloo-Valley, though, Blaine Vogt earned the Arlington pitching win with 4 2/3 innings of work. He was relieved by Kaden Pittman before Ott closed out the first-round win with three outs, including a strikeout, in the seventh.
“Tyler came in and shut them down,” Monke said. “Just what we needed.”
Overall, though, all three Eagles were efficient on the mound.
“As long as we throw strikes, we're good and we had three guys who threw strikes,” Monke said. “We had three guys that pitched well. That's, like, the name of the game.”
Arlington hit the ball, too.
After two outs to start the top of the second inning, Ott and Luke Sharp reached base, setting up McIntosh.
“I saw we had base runners and I had confidence going up,” he said.
The Eagle took a few Valley pitches before supplying a two-run-scoring swing.
“I saw four-straight sliders,” McIntosh said. “After the fourth one, I kind of recognized that it was coming.”
From there, Darren Olson and Monke added RBI swings through the end of Arlington's first Senior Legion victory in a month. Dalton Newcomer drew a bases-loaded walk, too, as the Eagles picked up their seventh win of the summer a day before their 12th loss.
POST 71 SENIOR LINE SCORES
Saturday
Wahoo 8, Arlington 0, 5 inn.
ARLO (7-12) 0 0 0 0 0 — 0
WAHOO 0 0 3 0 5 — 8
Friday
Arlington 6, Waterloo-Valley 1
WV 0 2 1 1 0 2 0 — 6
ARLO (7-11) 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 — 1
