Reichenau Throws Complete Game; Leads Wall to Area Championship

Wall received an incredible performance from Gage Reichenau on the mound in this ballgame. The young man pitched a complete game and only allowed two runs on two hits, with seven strikeouts in the win.

"In the bottom of the 6th after the last out, I met him right here at the line. I asked him, How is your arm feeling?" Head Coach Jeremy Gordon said of his pitcher after the game. "He said, 'I'm closing this out. This is my game.' I looked at him and said, You dang right you are."

Reichenau dueled a single pitcher on Henrietta's side throughout the night. He won the pitchers' duel in the end.

On offense, Hagynn Barbee and Gunnar Dillard led the way for the Hawks. Wall only scored four runs, but these two put the ball in play when it mattered.

Barbee scored first thanks to a single from Dillard in the 3rd inning. Dillard would score later in the 5th.

No playoff matchup would be complete without some adversity. Up 2-0 in the bottom of the 5th, a throwing error allowed a run to cross before some heads-up base running from Henrietta, and a mental mistake from the Hawks let a second run to score on the same play.

The Hawks could have folded right then and there, but this Wall team is resilient. All they did was retake the lead in the top of the 6th and add another insurance run in the top of the 7th to secure the win.

When asked what he said to his team after Henrietta tied the game in the 5th, Coach Gordon had words for his squad.

"Nobody's hurt," he said to them. "We've talked about it multiple times in practice, and we've talked about it multiple times all year. Bad things are going to happen; that's just a part of the game. How you respond to the bad things is how the game plays out for you."

With the win, Wall heads to the Regional Semifinals next weekend. The Hawks will face the winner of Idalou and Odessa Compass Academy. Idalou won Game 1 in that series 22-7.