#6 Kirkwood Falls in Region 11 Tournament
Fort Dodge, IA- The #6 Kirkwood Eagles travled to Fort Dodge this past weekend to compete in the Region 11 Tournament. As the tournament's overall 1-seed, Kirkwood had a bye the first round and would play the winnter of #4 seed Northeast Hawks and #5 seed DMACC Bears. The Region 11 Tournament is structured into an upper and lower bracket and you need to lose twice in order to be out the tournament.
#5-seed DMACC would take the first game against #4 Northeast and send them to the lower bracket to face #6 seed NIACC. This meant Kirkwood would be taking on the Bears in their first game. The first inning didn't get off to the way the Eagles had hoped. They ended up surrendering 10 runs to DMACC in the top of the 1st, digging a hole that would be extremely hard to get out of. Although Kirkwood would get on the board in the bottom of the 2nd inning with an RBI from Bronx Lewis, a 6 run top of the 3rd for the Bears would put the game out of reach for Kirkwood. DMACC would end up winning the game 17-3.
This loss would send the Eagles to the lower bracket to take on #3-seed Iowa Central Tritons. The season series had Iowa Central up 2-1 on Kirkwood on the year, however, the Eagles would look to even that on Saturday afternoon. Andrew Carroll would make the start on the mound for the Eagles and would proceed to pitch a complete game, giving up 6 hits and 3 runs while striking out 6. Addison Binnie would step up for the Eagles in a big way, delivering a home run and 4 RBIs for the team. Cal Sullivan and Ethan Bowers would each have 2 RBIs and Brayden Hellum, Miles Risley, and Alex Ritzer would each have 1. Kirkwood would only need 5 innings to close the Tritons out and send them out of the tournament, winning the game 13-3.
The win set Kirkwood up to take on the #2-seed Southeastern Hawks, a team they were 3-0 against on the year. Southeastern had also fallen to DMACC and the winner of this matchup would take on the Bears in the final of the Region 11 Tournament. Kirkwood would get out of the gate quickly, putting up 3 big runs in the bottom of the 1st inning. Southeastern would respond, however, scoring 2 runs in the top of the 2nd and 3rd innings, putting the score at 4-3 Hawks. After a few more runs scored by both teams, the game was tied up at 7 going into the top of the 6th inning. Unfortunately, Southeastern would go on to score 9 more runs from the 6th to 9th inning, finishing the game 16-8. Binnie would have another multiple RBI game, putting up 3 and adding another home run to his resume. Miles Risley would also go yard for the Eagles and had 2 RBIs for the team.
With this loss, Kirkwood will now wait to see if they get one of the 2 at-large bids for the 2024 NJCAA DII World Series.
