The Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk baseball team travels to Ottumwa Tuesday to play for a trip to the Class 2A State Tournament when the meet the Van Buren Warriors. The Hawks come into the contest with a 27-6 overall record after a 11-0 win over Durant in five innings to claim the District 9 Championship Saturday. Mid-Prairie finished as 17-1 champions of the River Valley Conference. The Hawks hit .317 as a team, with 235 runs on 278 hits, led by Karson Grout’s .456 average with 47 hits and 37 RBI. Cain Brown has a team best 36 runs scored. Mid-Prairie’s team ERA is 2.51 with a .216 opponent average on 179 hits, 78 earned runs, 96 walks and 223 strikeouts. The Golden Hawk starting rotation of Alex Bean, Brady Weber, Brock Harland and Collin Miller are 22-1 with a 1.84 ERA.

Van Buren is 25-3 this year. They won the Class 2A District 10 title Saturday 10-0 over Mediapolis in five innings. The Warriors were 11-2, second place in the South Division of the Southeast Iowa Superconference. They hit .325 as a group with 297 runs on 244 hits, led by Jackson Manning’s .518 mark with 58 RBI, 50 runs scored and 43 hits. The Warriors have a 2.75 ERA with a .148 opponent average on 117 hits, 69 earned runs, 95 walks and 185 Ks. Taylor Sprouse and Dylan Richardson are a combined 13-1 with a 1.85 ERA. Following their District title win Saturday, Golden Hawk head coach Kyle Mullet joined the KCII Postgame Show to talk about his team’s preparation for Tuesday. “Our focus has to be on what we’re doing. We’ve been trying to do that all year. Getting better day-by-day. The focus is on pitching, defense and hitting. We are going to hit all of those aspects. We need to throw strikes, put the baseball and play and hit it hard and play clean defense.”

These two teams met in last year’s District 11 Championship with the Golden Hawks eliminating the Warriors 15-3 in five innings in Wellman. The winner of this contest advances to the Class 2A State Tournament at Merchant’s Park in Carroll. The Golden Hawks are looking for their seventh all-time trip to state and first consecutive appearances since 2006 and 2007. You can hear all of the action live tonight between the Hawks and Warriors from Legion Field in Ottumwa, beginning with the Jessica Yoder and Sarah Bigley with Lepic Kroeger Realtors Pregame Show at 6:30 and first pitch at 7p.m. on AM 1380, FM 102.5 and KCIIradio.com.