Titans’ Dermody too much for Rams in substate final

J.C. Dermody had Glenwood’s number.

Again.

The Council Bluffs Lewis Central lefthander was dominant on the mound in Wednesday’s Class 3A, Substate 8 final victory over the Rams. He was perfect through five innings, did not allow a hit until the sixth and struck out 11 in the Titans’ 10-0 win to punch their ticket to next week’s Iowa State Baseball Tournament.

Dermody’s performance Wednesday follows his one-hit, 12 strikeout victory back in June over the Rams.

Glenwood coach Kurt Schultz said his team just had no answer for the hard-throwing lefty.

“He’s pitched a lot of good games,” said Glenwood coach Kurt Schultz. “And that’s the second one he’s pitched against us. He had us off-balance the whole time. He’s the best pitchers we’ve seen this year by far, both times we saw him.”

The No. 1 ranked Titans (31-3) set an aggressive tone from the opening pitch from Ram starter Kayden Anderson. Dermody led off the game by smacking the Ram righty’s first pitch of the game into centerfield for a base hit. He later came around to score after the Titans loaded the bases and Lewis Central would take a 2-0 lead into the second frame.

Anderson never seemed to recover. And never seemed to settle in.

“I think we made some mental errors, not so much physical, where we didn’t make plays and it cost us,” Schultz said. “He kept battling and had a couple innings where he got two outs and they came back and got runs both times. That’s a test to their ability.”

Anderson left the game after allowing a three-run homer by Payton Fort and an RBI single by Luke Woltmann in rocky fourth inning. J.D. Colpitts came on for Anderson to pitch the final 1 1/3 innings.

Evan Soergel had the Rams’ lone hit, a single to lead off the sixth inning.

Glenwood closes its season with a record of 19-9. Not a bad finished for a team that was at one time 6-9 on the season before closing the season by winning 13-of-14 games.

“I think everybody became a little more cohesive,” Schultz said. “We realized we can win, we can hit the ball, we can play defense and we can pitch. I think that was part of it. We got the attitude of ‘win every play.’”

After the game, Schultz specifically thanked his seniors for their contributions to the program. 

“I had a lot of fun with this group,” Schultz said. “They were interesting if nothing else and they contributed so much to this team. I thanked them and hopefully we can learn from this game.”

The Rams will lose six seniors from this year’s squad – Caleb Dressel, Austin Patton, Jayme Fritts, Grant Von Essen, Jacob Radford and Nolan Little – but a strong core returns for a still relatively young line up. Five of the top six hitters will all be back in Kayden Anderson, Tent Patton, Jason Colpitts, Risto Lappala and Soergel. 

“We have out shortstop back, our third baseman back and some pitchers back,” Schultz said. “We’ll have to replace Nolan (Little) at catcher and our centerfielder and right fielder will be difficult but we have some good pieces coming back.”