Wood Ducks fly back to Class B state amateur quarterfinals

Aug. 13—MITCHELL — The Hartford/Humboldt Wood Ducks are flying high again at Cadwell Park. Two years after reaching the state quarterfinal round in Mitchell, the Wood Ducks are back among the final eight in the Class B state amateur baseball quarterfinals following a 5-1 win over fellow Cornbelt League foe Flandreau Cardinals on a rainy Wednesday night. It made the Wood Ducks 4-0 over the Cardinals this season, with two wins during the regular season, a victory in the District 4B tournament and a fourth in the state tournament. "They know everything about us, we know everything about them," Wood Ducks starting pitcher Curtis Flint said. "I've only ever thrown a couple of innings against them, so they haven't seen me a whole lot. It's just about who competes today and we competed." Another Cornbelt matchup awaits in the state quarterfinals on Friday night, with the Wood Ducks facing Canova at 7:30 p.m. in Mitchell. The two teams split the regular season series in league play. "It's not really surprising. We have really strong competition in that league. We play a strong schedule and these are the teams you expect to see," Flint said. On the mound, Flint kept the pressure on the Cardinals, throwing six strong innings with two hits and one unearned run allowed, striking out nine, with three walks and three hit batters. In the seventh inning, the Wood Ducks (18-6) went to Madison pickup player Tyler Tappe for a three-inning save, and Tappe struck out five batters and allowed one hit and no runs. "I didn't feel like I had my best stuff. In the third inning, I started to lose a little bit of my command. But I gave the team six innings and then we gave Tappe the rock after me and I know we can trust him, we played him a bunch this year. We had just super strong defense today that helped me a lot." The Wood Ducks opened the scoring with a pair of sacrifice flies, with JJ Jessen scoring Chad Hunt and then Curtis Flint scoring Brodie Herr for a 2-0 advantage. Jessen then had an RBI single in the second inning to help build a 4-0 edge and an RBI triple in the top of the fourth for a 5-0 edge, scoring Herr again. It was one of three triples the Wood Ducks got in the win, including from Brody Jacobson and Keaton Vessells. Jesson, Vessells and Herr each had three hits, with Jesson driving in three runs. Herr scored two runs, and the Wood Ducks outhit Flandreau 11-3. The Cardinals got the Wood Ducks' scoring stopped in the fourth inning but then could not capitalize when they got the chances, loading the bases in the fifth and eighth innings but coming up empty. Flandreau finished the night leaving 11 men on base. Austin Koenig had the lone RBI for Flandreau. Bret Severson threw all nine innings for the Cardinals and allowed 11 hits, five runs (one earned) and struck out 10, walking one. The teams played the last 30 minutes of the game through a steady rain, the first such conditions of the state tournament in Mitchell.