New Bremen snaps St. Henry win streak

NEW BREMEN - The New Bremen Cardinals used early offense and a great pitching performance from sophomore Calib Cox to rout the St. Henry Redskins 11-4 in Midwest Athletic Conference action Friday afternoon at New Bremen High School.

With the win, New Bremen crawls back to .500 in the conference at 2-2 and improves to 7-6 overall. The loss snaps a six-game winning streak for St. Henry as the Redskins fall to 8-3 overall and 2-1 in the conference.

Cox, making his first varsity start, did himself proud as he held the Redskins to just four runs on six hits over six-plus innings. Taking advantage of a stiff wind that was blowing in from the outfield and great help from his outfield mates, Cox induced 10 flyball outs.

"Calib did an excellent job on the mound tonight," said New Bremen coach Greg Cox. "We have been trying to work him into our rotation, since he is just a sophomore, and we are not sure what we were going to get against tough conference competition, but I guess we got a good feeling about it, tonight anyway.

"We knew today that with the win blowing in our favor out of the west that we could go and challenge people and we just did that," continued Cox. "With the speed we got in our outfield, it is tough to find green out there."

"I have to give New Bremen credit today, they came ready to play," said St. Henry coach John Dorner. "They hit line drives all day, they struck out may be one time and they fared better then we did today.

"As for us, we had a poor effort and we had poor focus," continued Dorner. "We did not follow the game plan, we hit too may fly balls, we had 12 fly ball outs. We had some bad swings, it was just a poor effort."

While the St. Henry bats struggled against Cox, the Cardinals had no problem offensively against a quartet of Redskins hurlers pounding out 14 hits, scoring 11 times.

Eight of the nine Cardinal starters scored at least one run, all nine had at least one hit and five of them drove in at least one run.

New Bremen started things offensively early as it plated a pair of runs in the first inning off St. Henry starter Chad Siefring. Corey Jutte led off the frame with a base hit and stole second. After Jarred Cox reached on an error, Spencer Rohr plated both runners with double to the gap in right-centerfield.

New Bremen blew the game open sending 11 men to the plate in the second inning, scoring five times, to knock out Siefring.

Dylan Crisp led off with a single and went to second on a sacrifice by Adam Meyer. After Ryan Evers popped out to third for the second out, St. Henry intentionally walked Corey Jutte. Hank Zwiep then singled to load the bases and Jarred Cox had the big hit as he doubled to right to make the score 4-0. Zwiep then scored the fifth run on a wild pitch.

The Cardinals then took advantage of wildness on the part of Siefring as Rohr walked and Calib Cox was hit by a pitch to load the bases. The final two runs of the inning came on a bases loaded walk to Andy Timmerman and an infield hit off the bat of Crisp.

"We have been struggling here lately offensively so it was nice to see us get things going tonight," said coach Cox. "It was nice to jump out early and get some runs and hit all day."

New Bremen returns to action on Tuesday traveling to Maria Stein to face Marion Local for another conference match up. St. Henry returns to action today playing host to Lima Senior in a doubleheader scheduled for an 11 a.m. first pitch.