Zeeland West baseball swept, but will remember Minor League experience
COMSTOCK PARK, Mich. - Adam Locker stood on the top step of the dugout at LMCU Ballpark and watched his Zeeland West baseball team compete on the same field that the West Michigan Whitecaps play on.
The Dux coach hopes that his players will remember the experience for a long time because they will want to forget the result of their doubleheader on Wednesday.
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“It’s incredible,” said Locker, the Dux baseball coach. “I’ll be here in a few weeks with my family (at the Whitecaps game). They’ll be excited to say ‘Hey, my dad was out there coaching.’ For these kids, we want to win every game, but we are all about creating great experiences for our student-athletes. And being able to play in a ballpark like this, it does exactly that.”
Zeeland West (7-11) lost both games of a doubleheader to Cedar Springs on Wednesday. They lost the first game 5-3 and the second game 7-6.
“We got caught in a position where we started putting guys on base, giving up walks, a hit-by-pitch … I give credit to Cedar Springs, they did what they needed to do to put some runs across the board,” Locker said.
In the first game, Zeeland West jumped out to a 3-0 lead as they out-hit the Red Hawks 14 to three. Cade Overweg had an RBI single to make it 1-0 in the first inning, scoring Josh Agar. Carter Hughes made it 2-0 on an RBI single to score Deklen Klamt. In the third inning, Overweg hit a double to score Agar for a 3-0 lead.
But things unraveled fast in the bottom of the third as Cedar Springs scored four times on just one hit.
“That’s always frustrating giving up a lead like that,” said Overweg, who was 4-for-4. “But it was nice to see us score early because we’d been struggling with that.”
Senior left-hander Kole Meeuwsen started on the mound in the opener. Other than the rocky third inning, he pitched pretty well.
“I felt good to start the game,” said Meeuwsen, who gave up four earned runs and struck out seven batters. “But I had a hard time throwing strikes in the third inning. But I pulled it back together after that.”
So what’s it like playing on the Whitecaps’ field?
“It’s really sweet,” Meeuwsen said. “We’re lucky to have the opportunity to play here. Knowing that guys who go from the minors to the big leagues (play here).”
In the second game, the Dux led 6-2 entering the sixth inning. But in the bottom of the inning, they gave up four runs. They then gave up a walk-off hit to Cedar in the bottom of the seventh inning.
“We have to keep playing together and keep each other up when things go wrong,” Overweg said. “We’re getting the hits, we just have to put a few more together and we’ll be alright.”
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Zeeland West High School baseball swept, but will remember Minor League experience
