May 29, 2012
Kluck fires a no hitter for Pacelli.
Stevens Point– As a high school baseball pitcher, it’s probably not a rare thing to take the mound and feel like you don’t have your best stuff.
What would be rare is to not have your best stuff, but still manage to throw a no hitter. Such was the case for Pacelli’s Adam Kluck on Tuesday afternoon as the Cardinals defeated Wild Rose 10-0 to advance to the WIAA baseball regional finals.
Pacelli scored seven runs on six hits in the first inning to take a commanding lead over the visiting Wildcats. The offensive performance was a big lift for a team that hadn’t seen game action in over a week.
Tyler Nalbach was 2-2 on the afternoon with 2 runs scored and JC Lila was 2-4 with 2 RBIs.
“You always worry about your hitters not seeing live pitching,” said Pacelli head coach Wayne Sankey. ”But we came out in the first inning and hit the ball around the ballpark.”
Meanwhile, Kluck, who didn’t feel extraordinarily sharp on the mound, focused on pitching to contact and allowing his defense to make plays.
“To be honest, I think I actually think I’ve pitched better games,” Kluck said. ”When I pitched against Rosholt, I got rocked and thought I was throwing better that day. But I guess our fielders just made plays. Tyler Nalbach made a great play going up the middle to get an out, so that was huge… Having a great defense is huge because you know you can throw a fastball right down the middle and you’ve still got a good chance at getting an out.”
“Adam did a great job of getting ahead and using his defense,” Sankey said. ”The big thing we try to talk about is using the defense to keep the pitch count down.”
Kluck pitched 6 innings, walked five and struck out three.
Pacelli added one run in second and third innings, respectively, then won the game in the bottom of the sixth on an RBI single by Kyle Rogers.
Pacelli improves to 18-9 on the season and will face conference rival Amherst tomorrow afternoon at Bukolt Park.
