Jim Mashek

PURPLES’ ELI KREIS PITCHES THREE SCORELESS INNINGS; BGHS PLAYS HOST TO WAYNE COUNTY ON TUESDAY EVENING

It wasn’t a white surrender flag, but it was pretty darn close.

Adair County High School’s baseball team, sporting a solid 5-2 record on the strength of a four-game winning streak, took the 90-minute bus ride on Monday to Bowling Green’s Harold J. Stahl Field, where the rebuilt Purples are looking for an edge three weeks into the season.

Bowling Green came to bat in the bottom of the fourth inning on a cool, windy evening, leading 1-0 after scratching out a single run in the third.

Then, the Purples pulled out the aluminum and started spraying the ball around the yard. While using bases-loaded walks and hit batsmen to bring in three runs alone. Adair County, playing on even terms with Bowling Green over the first three innings, couldn’t get out of its own way, and the game ended before the Indians could retire the side.

Bowling Green 15, Adair County 0.

Bowling Green earned its seventh victory against three defeats while Adair County dropped to 5-3 overall. BGHS coach Nathan Isenberg has arranged for another mid-week game before the Purples’ trip for two games in Knoxville, Tennessee, later this week, so Bowling Green will take the field against visiting Wayne County (6-6) on Tuesday. First pitch is scheduled for 5:30 p.m.

Adair County, meanwhile, will tangle with Calloway County on Tuesday at the American Legion Park in Greensburg, which is playing host to the Green County Wooden Bat Tournament while most Kentucky schools are on Spring Break.

Bowling Green senior right-hander Eli Kreis worked the first three innings against Adair County, earning the victory to improve his record to 2-0 on the season. BGHS multi-purpose player Drew Isenberg pitched in the fourth, using a pickoff play to erase the second base runner of the inning, before slipping a called third strike past Adair County outfielder Jagger Kemp.

Then the Purples got the bats in their hands and got down to business.

“We played like a bunch of ‘chicken jockeys.’ We played hard,” BGHS senior outfielder Grayson Newman said. “We kept our head down, our nose in the dirt, and got it done in the end.”

Veteran BGHS coach Nathan Isenberg liked what he saw from Kreis, as well as the Purples’ patience at the plate in the fourth-inning blitzkreig.

“It was a nice win. Eli Kreis came out and competed in his first start,” Nathan Isenberg said. “He’d been sidelined with a shoulder injury. Total team effort, at the plate. (BGHS outfielder) Logan Johnson had some great at bats.”

Johnson delivered an RBI triple off the center-field fence in his first trip to the plate in the fourth, but he inherited a bases-loaded situation against Indians reliever Brayton Coomer in his next at bat.

Let Johnson take it from there.

“It was an 0-and-2 pitch, a little low and inside,” Johnson said after the game. “I just turned on it, put the barrel on the ball.”

The shot sailed over the fence in left-center field fence, and before the game was over, Johnson’s Dad, Brandon Johnson, had retrieved the ball from a neighbor’s back yard and returned it for his son.

The Purples collected 14 runs in the fourth on 11 hits, three for extra bases, and seven walks/hit batsmen. BGHS teammates Landon Gilbert and Logan Johnson each had two hits, with eight RBI between them, and the Purples were aggressive on the base paths.

Eli Kreis, a reliever last season, figures to have a more prominent role in his senior year. Nathan Isenberg is planning on starting sophomore right-hander Grayson Rodgers (1-1) in Tuesday’s home game against Wayne County.

“I just tried to get them to put it in play, let the defense work,” Kreis said. “I had a pretty good idea that the bats were gonna pick up. It was a good win for us.”