Heartbreak again

    It wasn’t supposed to end in Cedar Falls; instead, the script called for this brilliant season to finish on a Saturday afternoon in Principal Park.    This isn’t Hollywood, however; it’s baseball.    And on Tuesday night, the best baseball season in New Hampton school history came to a crushing conclusion with a 4-3 loss to Denver in the Class 2A substate game.    Those who feel the Chickasaws are snakebit on the diamond had those perceptions reinforced on this night.    Denver had one hit, a first-inning infield single, and did not hit a ball out of the infield the entire night, but the Cyclones used four unearned runs and a brilliant pitching performance by Zach Miller to stun the top-ranked Chickasaws in a substate game for the second straight year.    “They took advantage of the opportunities we gave them,” New Hampton coach Cory McDonald said. “That’s what these postseason games are all about.”    When it was over, the heartbreak was palatable, and there was little doubt that New Hampton would have traded every single one of its 32 regular season victories and a third-straight Northeast Iowa Conference championship for one trip to Des Moines.    For some, it felt like the ultimate nightmare. But don’t count McDonald in that camp.    “No, no, no, no,” he said when asked if that’s how he’d describe the game. “There’s been a lot of real tragedies around our area. Absolutely not, this is not the ultimate nightmare. It was a fun game. It was a fun season.”
    For the rest of the story, please see the July 21 Tribune.