Fueled by an eight-run fourth inning, the Clintonville High School baseball team beat Shawano 12-0 in five innings of nonconference baseball Friday at Memorial Park.
The Truckers took the lead in the first inning when Parker Mindel hit a ground ball to score Hunter Vollmer. They extended their lead to 4-0 in the third inning with a two-run error on a Aaron Morse ground ball and a RBI single by Vollmer.
Clintonville (8-6, 6-6 Eastern Valley) saved its knockout punch for the fourth inning, when Turner Doornink lead off with a double. A few batters later, the Truckers had loaded the bases on a base hit and walk, setting up back-to-back RBI singles by Jaden Doornink and Keyur Patel.
That prompted Shawano (4-12, 4-8 Bay) to switch from freshman pitcher Dylan Sumnicht to junior Brendan Cummings, but Morse immediately hit a two-run single. That was followed by a single by Vollmer to load the bases again. Damon Lorge walked to score another run, and a Shawano error allowed two more runs to get home.
Nicholas Hogen finished the scoring for Clintonville with a RBI single.
Shawano couldn’t get anything going before the end of the fifth inning.
“We’re a better ball team than what we showed,” Shawano coach Robert Wolff said. “It’s disappointing. When you get down, it’s hard to get back up. We took a punch and we didn’t get back up.”
The Hawks managed just three hits, as Mindel, a right-handed senior pitcher, earned the win. He walked one and struck out three, including two in the fifth to stifle any Shawano rally.
Wolff used the nonconference opportunity to give Sumnicht his first varsity start.
“I’m looking at the future,” Wolff said. “I wanted to see some of the underclassmen that are having success down there come up, pitch on the varsity and get some innings. You always have to look at the big picture. He did pretty well.”
Sumnicht struck out two, walked seven and allowed six runs on nine hits in 3 1-3 innings of work. Cummings pitched 1 2-3 innings of relief. He struck out one, walked one and allowed four hits and six runs.
Clint Dallas, Zach Sousek and Chase Henning each had hits for Shawano.
“The score, I don’t think, was accurate on how the game played out,” Clintonville coach Dean Muthig said. “They squared up the ball pretty darn good. They just hit it right at us. If a few of those balls were in the gap, we’re talking a different story.”
Doornink, a senior slugger who came into the game batting over .700 for the season, went 2 for 4 to lead Clintonville.
“He’s been pretty hot here,” Muthig said. “Pretty much anything he’s been hitting, he’s been hitting hard. And that’s with teams trying to pitch around him.”
“We got him to fly out once,” Wolff said. “We fooled him on a curve ball. When you have a good player like that, you just hope he makes a mistake when he’s hitting that well.”
Vollmer, a freshman hitting lead-off for Clintonville, had two hits and was walked twice.
“We brought him up here about four games into our season, and he’s done nothing but get on base,” Muthig said. “He doesn’t play like a freshman.”
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