By Drew Terhall

DailyAdvocate.com

GREENVILLE — The Greenville American Legion Post 140 18U baseball team dropped a game against Munice Post 19, 6-2, at Sater Heights Park on July 5.

It was a 2-2 tie game after the first inning. Aiden Psczulkoski had a RBI double in the first and Bryce Blumenstock walked in a run.

But after a few defensive errors from Greenville, Muncie capitalized with a run in the third and three runs in the fourth. Head coach Chad Henry said they had some failures on defense in this game, but hopes the team can fail forward.

The team is not going to be perfect, but Henry wants his team to learn from it and move forward.

“I think the kids are confident in what they’re doing, but sometimes they get down on themselves. Baseball is a metaphor for life. You’re going to fail, you got to come back from it,” Henry said.

Greenville couldn’t get much going on the base pads after the first inning. They couldn’t make much solid contact at the plate.

The team did play better overall in the last three innings of the game. The defense made a few plays, including Blumenstock taking away a few hits from his third base position.

Henry was happy with how his pitchers looked in this game. Alex Kolb started and pitched five innings. Henry said Kolb was effective with how he mixed speeds. He also said Kolb has evolved from being a bit of a hot head high schooler who would throw fastballs when he got mad into a more savvy veterans who is attacking hitter using his offspeed pitches more.

After Kolb was Hudson Fasnact. He pitched the last two innings and kept Muncie off the scoreboard.

Henry said Fasnact had a few rough outing prior to today, but bounced back in a big way in this game.

“It’s hard to believe the kid is 16 years old, just turned it, and he’s out here facing 18-19 year old kids. He was awesome tonight,” Henry said. “We work a lot on making sure we have two pitches when we go out. We need that to put away hitters and he’s been really good about it.”

The team also had the chance to honor veterans and the legion by inviting them out to the field for a pre-game ceremony. They announced each veteran on the field, played Taps and had a live national anthem. The team also wore special camo jerseys with the name of a veteran on the back.

Henry said the team is glad they were able to honor the veterans and the legion before the game.

“We wanted to find a way to honor the veterans. A lot of times, we wear the Post 140 on our chest, we play legion baseball but I feel like there’s situations we could try to do a little bit more, try to educate our youth on doing that,” Henry said.

Contact Daily Advocate sports editor Drew Terhall at [email protected]