Bengals clinch IEL title
Years ago under the late Dwight Church, Lewiston High’s baseball teams and winning were synonymous.
Under 14th-year coach Tom Grunenfelder, Lewiston’s baseball teams and winning continue to be synonymous.
The chase for the Inland Empire League championship was expected to go down to the final week. It ended a week early Tuesday afternoon.
Defending 5A state champ Lewiston captured a third straight league championship as the visiting Bengals swept Coeur d’Alene 11-2, 7-1.
“(We) don’t want to pat ourselves on the back, but I think we played as good a baseball today as we’ve played all year,” said Grunenfelder, whose team captured a ninth league title in his 14 years. “We were just clicking on all cylinders and made it look pretty easy against a really quality club.”
The wins gave Lewiston (18-2, 14-1) a sweep of the four-game league series with the Vikings (15-5, 9-5).
Coeur d’Alene was 10-0 before it was swept by the Bengals two weeks ago. Since then the Vikings are 5-5.
Vikings standout senior pitcher Andy Seaman came back on two day’s rest after winning against Lake City on Saturday. CdA coach Chris Stangel limited him to 50 pitches, and Seaman left after three innings.
Seaman didn’t have his best stuff initially, allowing back-to-back walks in the first inning of the opener. Those walks came around to score. Despite hitting a batter and walking a third, Seaman didn’t allow a hit as faced eight batters.
CdA responded in the bottom of the inning, knotting the score at 2.
J.J. Turbin knocked in a run on an attempted sacrifice that he beat out and a run scored when Jackson Seaman reached on a walk.
Lewiston starter Tyler Knigge, pitching after throwing three innings on Saturday, settled down thereafter, allowing three more hits and shutting out the Vikings over the final six innings.
Adam Carson, who went 5 for 7 in the doubleheader to raise his team-leading average to .583, put the Bengals ahead in the fourth with a run-scoring single.
The Bengals put it out of reach in the seventh when they sent 12 to the plate, scoring seven runs on seven hits including three two-run doubles.
“The last four or five games we’ve really started swinging it,” Grunenfelder said. “Even some of the outs we made were lined shots right at people.”
After Carson got five straight hits, three in the first game, he was retired on back-to-back groundouts in the second game.
“I was just seeing the ball real well and jumping on the fastballs they were throwing,” Carson said. “We did a pretty good job for 14 innings. We pitched well, we hit well and we did a lot of situational stuff well.”
CdA used seven pitchers in the two games trying to find a way to slow down the Bengals.
“I’m not anymore impressed than the first time I saw them,” Stangel said. “They’re a good group of players and they’re very well-coached. We hit the ball right at people and they hit the ball in better places. It’s always disappointing when we lose, but I saw a lot of good things for us to improve upon.”
Stangel was asked if the Bengals have established themselves as the best in the league.
“There’s no question that they deserve to be the league champions,” Stangel said. “I’d never take that away from them. I will tell you who is the best team at the end of the (regional) tournament.”
With the league title, Lewiston secured home-field advantage throughout regionals.
“Winning the league championship doesn’t mean you’re going down to state,” Grunenfelder said. “There’s still a tough (regional) tournament ahead and it’s anybody’s ballgame still and we know that.”