ONALASKA — Hitting is contagious, and the Holmen High School baseball team provided another example of that amid wind gusts on Thursday.
Coach Mark Wall wasn’t happy that it took so long for his visiting Vikings to find their rhythm in an MVC game against Onalaska, but what turned into a 10-3 victory gave them no worse than a share of the MVC championship this season.
Holmen (14-5-1, 10-0) completed a regular-season sweep of the Hilltoppers (7-10, 6-6) and took a two-game lead over second-place Aquinas (14-3, 8-2) with two games to play against each other.
The Blugolds need to win both games against the Vikings next week to force the tie.
“It’s a win toward the major goal of being the last team standing,” Wall said, adding that the Vikings want no part of a title share. “Taking down a neighbor, a rival, is also a big thing.”
Holmen sent 12 batters to the plate during an eight-run fifth inning that erased a 1-0 Onalaska lead and broke open a close game. The Vikings had eight of their 12 hits in the fifth and scored five times before a sacrifice fly for the first out brought home the sixth run.
Catcher Braeden Linse led off the fifth with a single, and his was followed by singles from shortstop Brennon Metzler and left fielder Alex Goryl to load the bases. Second baseman Nolan Mashak then put his team on the board with a double to deep right-center for a 3-1 lead.
Third baseman Jude Anderson then singled to left field, and right fielder Joe Meeter followed with a triple to right for a 5-1 lead before the first out of the inning was recorded. Meeter scored on that sacrifice fly off the bat of Noah Oswald.
The hit parade was needed after two hits, a two-out error and a walk allowed Onalaska to take a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first and hold it until the top of the fifth.
“We needed something to happen, and we got a couple of cheap hits before Mashak opened the floodgates,” Wall said. “They really fed on that emotion and went with the flow.
“But I was concerned about where that was during the first four innings.”
Anderson, Meeter, Oswald and Linse all finished with two hits. Meeter drove in two runs with his double and triple.
Onalaska finished with three hits, and John Gobel and Landon Stewart drove in a run each. Solid contact was tough to get against Holmen senior Paul Goryl, who struck out seven and allowed two earned runs through five innings.
The Vikings host Marshfield and Waunakee in a triangular on Saturday before playing at Aquinas on Monday and hosting Aquinas on Thursday. One more conference win gives the Vikings the outright championship.
