The Iowa Mennonite School offense put the pedal to the metal and never led off the gas en route to a 14-5 victory over Highland in Burlington last night in a class 1A district baseball semifinal game.

As heard on KCII, IMS scored in each of the first four innings to build an 11-2 lead headlined by a two RBI single from Blake Bontrager in the second. They tallied three in the first, two in the second, two in the third, and four more in the fourth to put the pressure on the Huskies. Highland would not go down without a fight, as they cut the deficit to 11-5 in the sixth on a two-run single from Jacob Leonard. IMS had the answer in the bottom half with three runs of their own to put the game out of reach and punch their ticket to the district title game. Every IMS player reached base safely led by Noah Miller going 2-for-3 with three RBI. Eli Ours went to work on the bump tossing six innings giving up two earned runs on six hits and striking out two. Brady Hahn led the Huskies with a 2-for-4 performance. Head Coach of IMS Danny Hershberger tells KCII Sports his offense was resilient. “We want to win every inning so when they were able to get a couple runs we wanted to answer and keep the margin where it was at. Our guys did a great job of staying focused and not slack off when we had a big lead.”

Highland ends their season 13-11 and say goodbye to seven seniors. IMS improves to 13-7 and advance to the district final on Saturday against Pekin back in Burlington. The Panthers defeated Burlington Notre Dame 10-4 in the nightcap on Tuesday.