The Muskego Impact’s season ended much too early as they dropped two of three to the Racine Kiwanis this past week.  Racine will play the New Berlin Lakers in the best of three this week with the winner moving on to the Land O’ Lakes Grand Championship.  After taking care of Racine in league play taking two of three earlier this year, the Impact just could not come up with some clutch hits.  They ended their season with a 17-8 record. 

In the first game of the series at Racine last Wednesday evening, the Impact outhit Racine 11 to 6, but left 16 runners on base dropping that first game 9 to 5.  It did not help that Racine batters were issued 8 walks and 3 were hit by pitch.  The leading hitter for the Impact was Bob Dillon who collect 3 hits and Mike Robinson, Nick Blanchet and Nick Schmidlkofer picked up 2 hits each.  David Mihlsimmer (6-2) took the loss pitching four innings, allowing 8 runs on 6 hits, striking out 3, walking 5 and hitting 2.  Luke Rozmarynowski pitched the final four innings allowing only one run on no hits, striking out 4, walking one and
hitting one.

The series moved to Horn Field on Sunday with the Impact needing to sweep a doubleheader to advance.  They started strong taking the first game 11-3 and it looked as though they were well on their way to that sweep.  Luke Rozmarnowski (5-0) picked a gem of a game picking up the victory.  He scattered 7 hits, striking out 5, walking 3 and hitting one.   The Impact were leading only by a 2 to 1 score when in the bottom of the fifth they erupted with 7 runs.  The big blows were a 2 run HR by Andy Liss and doubles by Nick Schmidlkofer and Kevin Schoenbach.  Nick Blanchet went 5 for 5 in the game, which included a triple and a double.  Schmidlkofer collected 3 hits and Mike Robinson and Bob Dillon had 2 hits each.

In the second game, things did not start out good and never did get any better as the Impact lost 13-3 to end their season.  Racine tallied 5 runs in the top of the first on only 2 hits with one being a bases loaded triple, and all 3 walks issued that inning scored.  The Impact could not recover from the early deficit as they could only muster 5 hits in the game, one being a HR by Joe Kooping in the bottom of the first inning.  Jake Jewell (4-2) took the loss pitching only two innings, allowing 6 runs on 4 hits, striking out 2 and walking 4. 

Coach Rick Henneberry is already looking forward next year, but said this final game of the season will be tough to put behind him, especially after coming out so strong in that first game.  To make matters worse, yours truly was unable to attend Sunday’s games because of a prior work commitment, but is also looking forward to next year.