Glenwood’s season ends in district semifinals

Bishop Heelan pushed across three runs in the bottom of sixth inning to provide insurance in a tight 5-1 victory over Glenwood in the Class 3A, Substate 1 semifinals last Monday at Lewis and Clark Park in Sioux City.

Class 3A, No. 5 Crusaders (28-10) took advantage of a trio of Glenwood fielding miscues that led to three unearned runs in that sixth inning

Glenwood coach Dave Clark said his team entered the game with a pitching approach that had Myles Stanton starting with Benn Christiansen and Korbin Pelzer waiting in the wings. It was a plan that worked through six innings.

“We had a plan to see if Myles could get through their lineup twice and if that could happen, we’d be in the ballgame,” said the coach.

And Stanton did that, the junior allowed just four hits and two earned runs and struck out four in four innings before giving way to Christiansen in the fifth.

“He’s sort of a slower throwing lefty that could throw them off and we thought if we could get one (inning) out of him then we could use Korbin and he’s been able to shutdown most teams. That was our strategy. We knew they had good pitching, so we knew runs were going to be at a premium, so we tried to force the issue (on the bases), and it worked sometimes, and we got picked off a few times.”

The Rams were indeed right in the ballgame, trailing 2-1 in the sixth when a misplayed popout, a stumble in the outfield and a passed ball all led two three unearned runs for the Crusaders.

“Ben (Christiansen) did his job, we had two outs and unfortunately we sort of reverted to some things we did earlier in the season, some mental mistakes, we’d worked really hard to get away from that helped them score some runs,” Clark said. “If we had been able to hold them there, a 2-1 game in the seventh, we would have had three outs to try and tie and make it a little more exciting game.”

Nathan Gaswint tossed a complete game on the mound for Heelan. The junior scattered three hits, no earned runs and struck out eight.

Christiansen had two hits, and Charlie Hutchcraft added a single for the Rams’ hits.

The Rams close out their season with a record of 12-21. Ryan Turner was Glenwood’s lone senior. Turner led the squad in home runs (4) while going 3-2 on mound.

“He took it hard, as most seniors do in their last game and their high school career comes to an end,” Clark said of Turner. “Luckily for him he’ll have a chance to move on and play some college ball.”

The future does indeed look bright for the Rams, who return a bevy of young, experienced players next season. Clark feels like with the progress this group made in just this season, the potential is there for a strong 2026 season.

“These are super competitive guys, and we have some really good athletes who played this season and saw the competition, took their teamwork seriously and didn’t complain,” Clark said. “They have to understand how to be more patient and not press the issue when bad things happen.

“We did a lot of that early this season. So fundamentally we need to focus on making routine plays. That’s going to be a big offseason push for us.”