Iowa captures Non-Select Division II baseball state championship

Lake Charles, LA (KPLC) - On Saturday, the Iowa Yellowjackets won the Non-Select Division II state championship 4-0 over the Lakeshore Titans.

Iowa’s Tyler Dartez was on the mound and pitched a complete shutout through all seven innings of action, and after the game was awarded the championship’s Most Outstanding Player Award.

“All I wanted to do was just go through the game one pitch at a time and get ahead in the count for every at-bat,” said Dartez. “Our team played great on offense, so I had to really only worry about just throwing pitches in the zone and lean on my defense to make plays.”

The Yellowjackets offense clicked early in the game as Cole Corbello cracked in the first two runs of the game as he sent a ball to left field to make it 2-0.

Iowa would then load the bases in the bottom of the third and would score another run off of a walk to extend their lead to three over the Titans

Just a couple of at-bats later Dartez lofted a ball right over the infield to bring in Deago Dennison that would push the Iowa lead up to four runs through three innings of action.

Iowa’s defense would then go on to finish the job as they got huge double plays in the fifth from an outfield Corbello throw to home plate, and then in the seventh inning as Lucas Alexander picked up a ball from second and then tossed it over to first to set up the final out of the game.

“It’s just so it’s unbelievable, Lakeshore is a really quality team and I was super nervous, I knew we were gonna have to catch lightning in a bottle and we talked about what it’s gonna take for us to win,” said head coach of Iowa Daniel Hennigan. “You know my players showed fight early and they just went ahead and went up four to nothing and honestly I didn’t expect that to happen, I can’t lie, but it was awesome to see them perform the way they did”.

This now marks championship number two in the program’s history as Iowa also won a championship all the way back in 2007.

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