By Dustin Henggeler

The Platte Valley Longhorns picked up two conference victories over West Nodaway in back-to-back fashion as they defeated the Rockets in a doubleheader April 17 at Beal Park.

The victories were by scores of 6-1 in game one and 15-10 in game two.

“We’re a young team that still has a lot to learn, but I’m proud of what we were able to do tonight,” Platte Valley Head Coach Aaron Murphy said of the set of conference wins. “We’re in a position right now where we will have to rely on a lot of things to happen for us to be contenders in conference, but we’re going to just focus on the things that we can control, which is to win the games that we’ve got ahead of us.”

“We’re just either hot or we’re cold,” West Nodaway Head Coach Hans Plackemeier said of his team in the set of losses. “I’ve seen what these guys can do and we tell them what needs to be done to maintain that consistency of success; we just haven’t gotten there yet.”

Both the Longhorns and Rockets scored in the first inning of game one with Platte Valley edging out 2-1 with early RBIs from Koby Stoll and Trey Farnan. West Nodaway scored in the top of the inning off a sacrifice hit by Cody Galyan. Farnan would make sure that his pitching kept the Rockets scoreless for the remainder of the game.

As the 2-1 lead carried through to the fifth inning, Platte Valley came alive in the bottom of the fifth as a run was scored by Dalton Luke to increase the lead to 3-1 into the sixth. The very next inning, Nate Jermain, Luke Meyer and Regan Meyer each picked up RBIs to double their lead over the Rockets for the eventual 6-1 win.

Game two started in a similar fashion with both teams scoring early.

In the top of the inning, Platte Valley lurched to a 6-0 lead with RBIs by Clayton Wilmes, Luke, Tanner Davis and Logan Harlan. The Longhorns made the most of dropped balls and overthrown plays for their early lead.

That same inning, West Nodaway notched a single run, again by Galyan, to trail 1-6 into the second inning.

Allowing just one run from Platte Valley’s Meyer, West Nodaway made a strong comeback attempt with a four-run inning to close the gap to 5-7 behind the Longhorns. Galyan, David Hull and Parker Ogle were contributors that inning.

A single run by Platte Valley was all that was accomplished in the fourth inning when Wilmes earned an RBI off a sacrifice play. After being walked four times previously, Platte Valley’s Tristan Freemyer picked up the play of the night with a three-run triple into center field to make it an 11-5 lead for the Longhorns. The Rockets were scoreless in the bottom of the inning. Platte Valley scored two runs in both the sixth and seventh innings from a two-run double by Jermain, a score from Taylar Freemyer and an RBI by Harlan.

The Rockets managed a three-run sixth inning to close the gap to 8-13, following up with another two runs in the seventh inning to make the final score 15-10. Hull, Carter and Galyan were once again the producers for the Rockets in the sixth while a two-run hit by Korbin Koch brought the final two runs for West Nodaway.

The couple of wins bumped Platte Valley to 2-6 while West Nodaway falls to 3-8 in the regular season.