NORWAY - The Escanaba High School baseball team came up with its second dominant performance in as many nights Wednesday in the season's opening week.
The Eskymos crushed Norway 13-0 in five innings, a night after drilling Marquette 12-1 in six innings.
Coach Kirk Schwalbach, 2-0 in his career at the helm, expects stronger opposition this weekend when the Eskymos host Rudyard at 4 p.m. Friday and Shawano, Wis. at 12:30 Saturday in a pair of doubleheaders that will test his pitching depth.
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Burt Angeli | IM?Daily?News
Alex DeHaan of Escanaba fires a pitch at Norway Wednesday.
Wednesday, Alex DeHaan allowed just two hits and one walk with eight strikeouts over four innings and Dave Falish allowed one hit and struck out three.
Schwalbach said DeHaan had seven first-pitch strikes against 16 batters and threw just 36 pitches over three innings. He had 26 pitches in the fourth inning.
"He got ahead (of hitters), had good command and was around the strike zone all night," said Schwalbach.
The Eskymos broke the game open with seven runs in the third inning. Austin Young had a two-run double and DeHaan had a two-run single to highlight the uprising that included five hits, two walks and two hit batters.
DeHaan drove in three runs overall while Ben Kleiman had three hits and reserves Tim Lueneburg and Travis Heller added two hits.
"We're hitting better than I expected," said Schwalbach. "We didn't really sting it, but we put the bat on the ball." Esky only struck out three times.
Norway (3-2), which loaded the bases in the fourth inning before DeHaan struck out the final batter, also could not take advantage of Escanaba's lone error.