By Rodney Haas 

605 Sports 

MITCHELL — The goal for the Mitchell Kernels heading into the final month of the South Dakota high school baseball season is to host the best-of-three state qualifier series. 

But in order to achieve that goal, the Kernels will have to win games against teams ahead of them in the standings, beginning this week with a pair of games against Sioux Falls O’Gorman and Brandon Valley.  

“One of the main things that is going to help us make the state tournament is playing at home and not having to travel for that best-of-three series,” Mitchell coach Luke Norden said. “We have to be able to win some games with some of those teams up above us. We’ve had some really good games with a couple of the Sioux Falls schools.”

Mitchell fell to Sioux Falls Lincoln 6-5 on April 22 and lost to Sioux Falls Jefferson 1-0 on April 15. 

The Kernels closed out last week with a doubleheader sweep of Sturgis 7-0 and 15-0.   

“I’ve looked at years of data about winning percentage and getting five runs is huge,” Norden said. “Getting the five runs is really huge because if you can hold a team under five runs is a big deal. We haven’t won a lot of games before 3-2 or 2-1 games. Normally that’s not our game.”

Against the Scoopers, the Kernels scored two runs in the bottom of the first inning and plated four runs in the fourth inning to take a 6-0 lead after four innings. 

It was plenty of run support for Mason Herman who pitched a complete game shutout while allowing four hits and striking out six. It was the second strong pitching performance for Mitchell in a week after Tyler Christensen no-hit Pierre on April 21 in a 2-0 win. Christensen pitched seven innings, allowing just two walks and striking out five.   

“Just having a little bit of consistency on a daily basis has been good,” Norden said, referring to last season in which half season’s games were canceled and stretches of days where it was too wet to even practice. “I think our pitchers have done a really good job. They have been our strong point. Normally it takes a while for pitchers to get going because they have to build up some strength. We’ve done a few things differently with our pitchers than before and I think it has paid off strength wise.”

While the mild weather and frequent bullpen sessions have helped the Kernels pitching staff, the other factor according to Norden is the presence of freshman catcher Bailor Kristensen.  

“He looks like he’s been back there for a very long time,” he said. “The pitchers trust him, which is really cool because you wouldn't think a freshman would gain that much trust from junior and senior pitchers. They appreciate how much work he puts in.”

Besides Kristensen, the outfield of Gavin Jones, Hudson Borgan and Carter McCormick have been keys to Mitchell’s (9-6) success. 

“Our outfield defensely, they’re good but they’ve gotten better as well and I’m really happy with the couple of steps defensively of just wanting to go and get the baseball,” Norden said. 

While the pitching and the outfield have been performing well, the biggest issue for Norden has been finding a consistent lineup and not getting themselves into outs. 

“Most of our outs are swinging at pitches we shouldn’t be swinging and trying to do too much with two outs. We just need to do a better job of putting the ball in play,” he said. 

“I told the guys some teams are going to stop halfway through the year and be in game mode and everyday until the last day, it’s a process of getting better — in all facets. There will be some teams that will stop doing that and we will not stop doing that. We’ve always been better at the end of the year, then we have at the beginning and the middle. The end has always been the best for us and we have to keep working on that all the time.”