North and Memorial baseball gearing up for crosstown series

It’s rivalry week at Carson Park as the Eau Claire Memorial Old Abes and Eau Claire North Huskies renew their crosstown series on the diamond. The two meet in a pivotal Big Rivers Conference series as the regular season enters its final month.

North enters the series at the top of the mountain of the Big Rivers, sharing the summit with Hudson at 6-2 in conference play. The Huskies are coming off of a sweep of Chippewa Falls last week, holding the Cardinals to just three runs across both games.

Pitching and defense has undoubtedly been North’s strength this season. The Huskies have found one of the better Big Rivers duos on the mound in seniors Chase Watkins — a UWEC commit — and Aidan Ecker. The pair have stepped up to become North’s consistent midweek starters.

“Having that consistent Tuesday and Thursday rotation, which we didn’t have last year, has been really important for us,” North head coach Jordan Fish said.

Fish was also complimentary of his weekend starters as well, highlighting pitching as a whole as a brightspot for the team early on. This season, North’s opponents have scored five or more runs in just three games. The Huskies have also held their opponents to two runs or less in seven games this year.

North’s pitching against the Old Abes strong lineup figures to be the x-factor of the series. The middle of Memorial’s batting order, highlighted by seniors Sawyer Stein and Leo Lauscher, is a force to be reckoned with. Fish said as much while also highlighting the depth of the Old Abes lineup.

Memorial has the bats to match up with the Huskies arms and whichever side can dictate the game will be in good position for the series.

“Staying disciplined in our approaches. Trying to try to capitalize when those opportunities present themselves I think is going to be really important,” Memorial head coach Kyle Kaufman said of how the Old Abes need to approach facing North. “You just don’t know how consistently you’re going to be able to string a lot of hits together, so it’s a matter of making the ones you get count.”

The Huskies keeping runs off the board is in large part due to their defense as much as their pitching. With the exception of a few select games, Fish is pleased with where North’s fielding is at as well. One area the Huskies skipper would like to see improve is at the plate.

“I think we need to do a better job of consistently scoring runs and putting together good at bats and capitalizing on opportunities,” Fish said. “Offensively, I think that’s where we still have the most room for growth right now. Bats are starting to come around a little bit and we just need to be a little bit more consistent.”

With close to half of the season in the rearview mirror, North has put itself in excellent position in the race for the Big Rivers crown. The Huskies don’t face Hudson until the very last week of the season and enter their series against Memorial looking to fight to stay atop the league.

“Our goal is to go out and to be competitive in every conference game,” Fish said. “We’re lucky enough to play in a conference where we get tested twice a week and to be able to be competitive within that, that’s where we want to be.”

Memorial enters the crosstown rivalry at 4-4 in conference play. The Old Abes have been up and down in league play but do have a 10-0 win against Hudson and are trending up after sweeping Rice Lake and scoring 26 runs across both games against the Warriors last week.

The Old Abes have flashed the potential of being as talented as anyone in the conference and simply need a bit more consistency against their conference foes. Kaufman roundly praised his senior leaders in Stein, Lauscher, Elliot Heit, Jack Gabler, Tyler Iverson and Brayden Pomazal and his team as a whole for being able to stay in the moment.

Even so, the Old Abes head coach still wants to see improvement across the board as the season progresses.

“There’s work to be done in all aspects,” Kaufman said. “We’ve pitched the ball well, but I think we have the capability of pitching it better. We’ve defended well, but still there are things to clean up. I think we’ve had a really sound approach for the most part but still working on executing situations and having productive at bats up and down the order consistently is always something you want to emphasize.”

Neither North or Memorial want to make the crosstown series the be-all, end-all of its season, but there is always something to be said of the rivalry being a big part of the season. The fact that each team is competitive in the conference only bolsters the intensity.

“Definitely there’s a lot more around this series being the crosstown and certainly it has implications in the conference standings,” Kaufman said. “But so do all the other ones too. So we just want to make sure that first thing’s first here and that’s making sure we’re as prepared as we possibly can come Tuesday night.”

Kaufman isn’t 100% sure who will toe the rubber for the Old Abes on Tuesday after Memorial’s weekend games, but the team will be ready to go no matter who’s on the bump.

First pitch of the series is at 6 p.m. Tuesday and the second game will kick off at 6 p.m. Thursday. Both games will be at Carson Park.