A defensive struggle on the baseball diamond came down to the final at-bat Thursday in Storm Lake as Clay Central-Everly defeated Graettinger-Terril/Ruthven-Ayrshire, 4-3, in advance to the Class 1A District finals. The eighth-ranked Mavericks opened the scoring in the fourth with a RBI groundout from Caleb Mackey. Two doubles and a single in the fifth led to a couple more runs in the fifth before Nick Roghair capped the CCE scoring with a successful suicide squeeze in that frame. The 4-0 lead was then challenged in the last two innings as the Knights finally broke through to score a run in the sixth and two more in the seventh, however, with the game’s tying run standing at third base, Mackey would strike out the final two G-T/R-A batters to close out the win. The senior finished with seven K’s. The loss falls on Tyler Dalen, despite limiting the Mavericks to just three hits in four-plus innings of work. Mitch Girres led the Knights with two hits and a RBI while Blaze Alesch scored twice in the game. Graettinger-Terril/Ruthven-Ayrshire ends their season at 14-11. Clay Central-Everly heads back to Storm Lake on Saturday to take on another Cornbelt Conference foe, West Bend-Mallard. The Wolverines took down Laurens-Marathon in five innings by a 15-5 final.
Elsewhere in Class 1A, George-Little Rock hosted Central Lyon and came away with a 4-2 victory to reach Saturday’s District final in Granville against the host, Spalding Catholic. They got by Akron-Westfield 11-9.
