For the third straight season, the Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk baseball team will play for a Class 2A District title. The Hawks are at home tonight against the Van Buren Warriors. Mid-Prairie is 16-10 on the year after a semifinal win Tuesday over Cardinal at Mediapolis 4-0. The Golden Hawks are hitting .288 as a team, with five above .300, led by Karson Grout’s .373. He and Dylan Henry each have 22 RBI and Cain Brown has 28 hits and 28 runs scored. On the mound, the Golden Hawk team ERA is 4.04 with Brock Harland at 3-1 with a 2.10. Grout is 3-0 with a three mark while Bowen Burmeister, Collin Miller, and Brady Weber are all multi-game winners.

Van Buren is 12-15 on the year and into the district title game after an upset of Mediapolis on the road Tuesday 8-7. The Warriors are hitting .282 as a team with Jack Manning at .411 with 39 hits, 33 runs scored and 23 driven in. Their team ERA is 4.69 with Manning and Taylor Sprouse working 85 combined innings with a 7-7 record and 3.13ERA. Following their Tuesday win over Cardinal, Mid-Prairie head coach Kyle Mullet joined the KCII postgame show and talked about his team’s focus in practice to get ready for Saturday. “Offensively, same approach. We have to take chances and create opportunities we can playing small baseball. We also need to get our bats going and start to string some hits together. Get those top of the order guys going and that’s our focus offensively. We still want to play clean defense, pitchers still have to throw strikes but we’re confident in that. Hopefully we can get our bats going.”

The winner of this contest takes home the district 11 title and moves on to Tuesday’s substate final, one game shy of the state tournament in Carroll. You can hear all of the action between the Warriors and Hawks on AM 1380, FM 102.5 and KCIIradio.com, tonight, beginning with the Washington HyVee Pregame Show at 6:30 and first pitch at 7p.m. from Paul N. Bailey Field in Wellman.