West High’s baseball team faced off against the Cedar Falls Tigers in the second round of substate and kept a great fight through all seven innings.

Just in the bottom of the first inning Nate Gudenkauf ’22 and Marcus Morgan ’21 gave the Trojans an early lead, with a base hit from Gudenkauf and a home run from Morgan. The Trojans, however, lost that edge after the second inning when Cedar Falls caught up with five runs of their own.

Morgan and Gudenkauf proved to be a dynamic duo once again during the bottom of the third inning, with a single from Gudenkauf and an RBI from Morgan. Once again in the bottom of the fourth, University of Iowa commit Morgan gets credited with another RBI, which results in Carter Freidhof ’23 and Ian McAreavy ’21 to score. Yet again another RBI from Alex McKay ’21 helped Gudenkauf score. Cade Adkins ’22 ended the fourth inning right with an RBI, leading Morgan to score again. The Trojans’ hard work during the bottom of the fourth brought the score even, 7-7.

The next two innings weren’t as successful, causing West to trail to Cedar Falls 12-7.

Morgan once again proved his dominance with another RBI, which led the final score to be 12-8, with Cedar Falls advancing to the substate final game against Prairie on Wednesday.

The Trojans finish the year with a record of 22-15. Charlie Stumpff’s squad will be back for more next May in 2022.