The Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk baseball team is back on the diamond in Carroll Thursday for a Class 2A State semifinal contest against Estherville Lincoln Central. Mid-Prairie is 19-10 on the season after a victory over No. 3 Cascade 3-2 in the quarterfinals of the 2A tournament on Tuesday. Cain Brown, Alex Bean, Tyler Helmuth and Dylan Henry each had two hits for the Hawks in their opening win with Bean, Collin Miller and Brock Harland posting an RBI. Miller was the winning pitcher with his six innings of five hit, two run work while he struck out 10. Mid-Prairie is hitting .291 as a team, with five players over .300 led by Cain Brown at .382 with 34 hits and 33 runs scored. Karson Grout has a team best 28 driven in. The staff ERA is 3.65 with Collin Miller 5-2 with a 3.02 mark. Karson Grout, Brock Harland and Brady Weber are a combined 10-3.

Estherville Lincoln Central is 32-2 this year, winners of the Lakes Conference. The Midgets got by Interstate 35 5-1 in their tournament opener Tuesday. They were ranked No. 2 in Class 2A in the final poll of the year from the Iowa High School Baseball Coaches Association. On the year, they are hitting .338 as a team with eight players over .300 led by Blake Evans at .416 with 37 hits. Carter Snyder has driven in 37 and Ryan Schlitz has scored 42 times. The Midget team ERA is 1.74 with Landon Vaske on top at 7-1 with a 1.36 ERA. Owen Larson, Snyder and Schlitz are a combined 20-1. This week, Mid-Prairie head coach Kyle Mullet and his guys talked about what it will take to get to the championship game.

Bean commented, “We need to hit the ball hard, play good defense and throw strikes.”

Helmuth added, “We need to drive guys in and score runs when we get people on base.”

Mullet’s thoughts included “We need to focus on us. Keep working on the hitting. Keep putting the ball in play. We’ll stick with our small ball approach. Get runners on base and advancing them. We just gotta execute better. There’s a few at-bats today where we needed guys to come through and instead we took some fastballs down the middle that we should be swinging at. I think it’s more of a mentality thing.”

These two teams have never met. The last and only time Mid-Prairie advanced through this round of the postseason was when they won it all in 2004. You can hear all of the action this afternoon live on all KCII signals and platforms beginning with the Washington HyVee Pregame Show at 4p.m. And first pitch at 4:30 from Merchant’s Park in Carroll.