April Might Heat up, will the Orioles Heat up too?

While there may be snow on the ground, the Lennox Oriole baseball team has got a lot coming up including four game days in the next week.

With the same amount games needed to complete the season but losing the first nine days of April due to weather. Lennox has 9 games in the next three weeks, which will test the team's focus and pitching.

Lennox will start the busy season with a home game vs. Tri-Valley. Last season’s Tri-Valley match-up was in Colton and Lennox ran away with an 11-0 victory. Last year’s win was very much senior led as former senior Braedon Wallenstein pitched a five inning, two hit, shutout. Senior Marshal McLaren had two hits as Wallenstein and Devon Jongeling both had hits as well. This year, Lennox will have to rely on a different class to come through with the victory. They hope to start another win streak here in 2018.

That moves us to Friday’s game vs Canton. A team that has struggled to win games, but has been a true threat to Lennox. Despite Canton winning only three games last season, they threatened Lennox three times with 1 run games each game. In the first game, Lennox went back and forth taking a 3-0 lead but surrendering that in the 2^nd as Canton took a 4-3 lead. Lennox would work a couple runs in the fourth and fifth to win 5-4 despite Canton’s 7^th inning threat. The second game, Lennox won via forfeit due to Canton not having certified umpires. The series finale was in the playoffs where fifth seeded Canton just about beat top seeded and undefeated Lennox. Devon Jongeling hit an RBI double that would eventually be the differences in the 1-0 Lennox win. Despite the recent struggles from Canton’s baseball team, they always seem to contain an explosive Lennox team.

As of now, the Lennox JV team will host a JV tourney/ opportunity for the junior varsity to get more games, to happen on Saturday. As of now, the forecast is for cold and possible snow, which would obviously cancel those plans. The junior varsity teams from Brandon Valley, McCook Central and Dell Rapids will make the trip down and each team will be guaranteed two games. Stay tuned for more details on that such as games times, opponents, and weather issues.

Finally, weather pending, Lennox will travel up to Baltic to conclude the four games in five days adventure. Last season, Baltic came to Lennox looking to stop an undefeated season, but the Orioles defense and pitching prevailed as they topped Baltic 4 to 0. In that game, senior Devon Jongeling threw 4.1 innings and Camden Wulf threw the final 2.2 innings completing the combined shut out. That game was Lennox’s only homerun, as Brock Anderson would hit a solo homerun in the fourth inning.

You may be reading this and looking out the window at the snow thinking, “there’s no way that it is baseball season or that we have a game in two days.” However, South Dakota being as crazy as she is, the weather is expected to be in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s in the next four days. Tri-Valley’s game on Wednesday is forecasted for 61 degrees and Friday’s game in Lennox vs Canton is predicted at 50 degrees. However, the weekend games aren’t looking too probable.

Stay tuned to this website, Lennox Facebook page “LHS Baseball” or follow @LHSMensBaseball on twitter for news updates and live in game updates.

Thanks for reading!