DEVILS LAKE — New season. New field. And an undefeated team at home so far this year.
Legion Field, located at Roosevelt Park in Devils Lake, is finally ready for use after a year of construction. The Lake Region State College baseball team, which had gotten off to a 2-10 start, took the infield turf for the first time and shined in its home opener on Saturday.
“It’s special because it’s been two years and some of these guys haven’t gotten to play,” LRSC head coach Laurence Arango said. “It’s been a privilege to have them here, and they haven’t had a chance to play at home; they’ve been playing on the road. So we’re very excited, very happy. Great to represent the community here.”
The Royals swept a doubleheader over the North Dakota State University club team. They overcame an ugly first inning in the first game, chipping away for a 6-5 comeback win in extra innings. Kaeden Siwak was the walk-off hero, while Hunter Brodina was stellar on the mound. The second win saw a more well-rounded effort: a 7-0 victory with a complete-game shutout from William Carson.
“It shows the heart that we have,” Arango said. “We’ve battled a lot of adversity all season. We barely got outside. We’ve missed three weeks of games. It’s been a long road, a long battle. But we’re very confident. This is a great group of kids.”
The day began in disastrous fashion. After a leadoff double, starter Brayden Ehnert got the next two outs, but those were the last batters he was able to retire. He hit a batter, then surrendered a two-run double. He walked back-to-back hitters to load the bases, then hit two batters in a row. The Royals quickly fell into a 5-0 hole.
After throwing a first-pitch ball to the 10th Bison of the inning, Arango elected to make a pitching change.
Then the Brodina show began.
“Brayden, he has his pitches,” Brodina said. “He had a lot of walks, but I know he could have done a lot better than he did.”
Brodina struck out the first batter he faced, mercifully ending the top of the first. He kept rolling with seven strikeouts among his first nine batters, including five in a row at one point.
Brodina utilized a slider with vertical movement that he could sneak onto the inner part of the plate. He also located his fastball well on the outer half, which was especially important since he had some trouble locating his slider through the heavy wind at times.
“He was amazing. He’s a great competitor,” Arango said. “Five-nothin’, it’s easy to go the other way… A Herculean effort, I would say.”
The Royals didn’t get any hits in the first four innings against right-hander Beck Loesch. Early on, they were kept off balance by his high velocity.
Brodina got into his first jam in the fourth. A one-out walk, followed by the first hit Brodina allowed, put runners on the corners. But a 6-4-3 double play kept the Bison off the board.
Siwak collected LRSC’s first hit of the day, and a two-out single by Tyler Kleinjan moved him to third. Siwak thought about going home, and he probably would have scored since the throw was up the line. But he’d already committed to staying, and the Royals wound up getting nothing that frame.
Brodina worked around a leadoff single in the fifth. He recorded two more strikeouts, the latter of which came on a front-door slider that completely froze the hitter. It brought his strikeout total to nine through 4 1/3 scoreless innings.
The Royals got on the board in the fifth, due in part to some sloppy NDSU fielding. Ronald Nelson led things off with a hit up the middle, and the pitcher Loesch committed two errors: one on a pickoff attempt, and another on a comebacker. The first LRSC run came home on a groundout to short.
Brodina found himself in another tight spot in the sixth, much like the one in the fourth. The Bison put runners on the corners with one out after a hit by pitch and a single. But LRSC turned another slick 6-4-3 double play to get out of it.
“Our defense was really, really good today, and especially stepping up with what we’ve been doing lately,” Brodina said.
The Royals kept chipping away in the bottom of the sixth. Siwak reached on a leadoff error and scored on a clutch two-out single from Jacob Ripplinger, cutting NDSU’s lead to 5-2.
With LRSC two outs away from falling in Game 1, Nicholas Smith smacked an RBI triple. Siwak, representing the tying run, hit a wind-aided double to cut the deficit to 5-4. Marshel Herman struck out for the second out, and Kleinjan hit a routine ground ball to second that should have ended the game. But the second baseman booted it, and Siwak hustled to score all the way from second.
The Royals found a way to tie this game and send it to extra innings. Loesch pitched seven innings for NDSU; he dominated early on, but his defense let him down in the late innings.
Amazingly, Brodina stayed in. He was still sharp, too, sending the Bison down one-two-three with his 11th strikeout in the eighth inning.
“For some reason, my arm felt really good,” Brodina said. “So no, I didn’t really get tired.”
NDSU sent left-hander Skylor Aruba to the mound for extra innings. Neither team scored in the eighth, and another double play helped Brodina post a zero in the ninth. A leadoff walk and a bunt single set the table for Siwak, who walked it off with a single.
The comeback was complete.
“We just kept fighting, and that’s the kind of spirit we have,” Arango said.
Brodina was outstanding for the Royals, pitching 8 1/3 scoreless innings with just three hits allowed. He struck out 11 and walked three. His pitch count climbed all the way up to around 100.
It’s just the latest success for a Brodina kid, following his cousins Beau, Parker and Tylie’s basketball championships this winter.
“I’ve grown up with them,” Brodina said. “We do a lot of hunting together, a lot of baseball. We play in one baseball tournament in North Dakota every year together. But yeah, they’re great kids.”
So, what looked like the start of a nightmare in the first inning shifted into the first home victory for the Royals on the Legion Field turf.
Their good fortune extended into the second game, where they put up one run in each of the first three innings. Smith was responsible for the first run, doubling and later scoring on a wild pitch. Another NDSU error gave LRSC its second run, while Jacob Warnke lined an RBI single for the third.
The Royals added four more in the fourth to take a 7-0 lead. Herman and Kleinjan each had an RBI single, and stolen bases and errors continued to hurt the Bison.
Carson, a right-hander, got things done on the mound for the Royals. He pitched all seven innings and only allowed two hits: one in the second and one in the seventh. He struck out five and didn’t issue any walks.
“What more can I say about William Carson? He just pitched a tremendous game,” Arango said. “He’s quiet, but he’s a competitor.”
LRSC is back in action Sunday with another doubleheader against the Bison at 1 and 3 p.m.
