Making the most of their home runs, the Calhoun Yellow Jackets rolled to the Class AA state championship.
The Yellow Jackets (35-1) launched three homers and got strong pitching to defeat Cook 8-2 on Tuesday in Adel in Game 3 of the state championship series.
Calhoun previously won state titles in 1974, 2000 and 2005.
“It has been an outstanding season,” Calhoun coach Chip Henderson told WEBS radio. “People were talking about going 36-0, but that wasn’t really our focus. We wanted to make it to this final [series], and whether it took us two games or three, we didn’t care.”
Calhoun entered the series having scored 376 runs in 33 games, but scored five in the first two games. On Tuesday, they erupted for five in the fourth and fifth innings.
The big blow was Carter Harrison’s three-run homer in the fifth, pushing the lead to 7-2. It was Harrison’s second of the series, during which the Yellow Jackets scored 10 of their 13 runs on homers.
Tuesday's game was interrupted by a half-hour rain delay in the middle of the sixth.
After losing Monday’s first game 6-1, they held Cook (31-5) to four runs over the final two games.
Landon Curtis, who pitched a scoreless seventh inning to close out Calhoun’s Game 2 win, started and lasted five innings, allowing a fourth-inning solo homer to Palmer Betts. Otherwise Curtis frustrated Cook, which stranded seven runners through the first five innings. Harrison finished it off, pitching two scoreless innings.
Jordan Poole blasted a two-run homer in the first inning, and Game 2 hero Zack Bradley added a two-run double in the fifth for Calhoun. Bradley’s solo shot to lead off the seventh made the score 8-2.
