Iowa Lakes took on Ellsworth Community College Sunday at Winona State Univeristy to conclude the conference opening series. The Lakers would end up falling in both games by a score of 7-6 in Game 1 and 11-3 in Game 2.

Freshman Pitcher, Carl Renz (Pewaukee, Wisconsin), took the ball in Game 1 and would cruise through the first inning retiring the Panthers in order. He would run into some trouble in the second however as the Panther offense would put up a 4-run inning to give Ellsworth the early lead after two innings of play. Heading into the fourth inning, the Lakers offense would find some life as Mallard Holland (Tampa, Florida) would single to start the inning as part of his 3-hit game. Two batters later, Jayden Adrains (Green Bay, Wisconsin) would double into the right center gap to bring home Holland and cut the deficit to 4-1. The Panthers would answer back in bottom of the fourth with a run of their own to give them a 5-1 lead after four innings. Both the Lakers and the Panthers offense would trade runs in the fifth as well as the Lakers getting a run in the sixth inning from a Dillon Van Oosbree (Emmetsburg, Iowa) RBI single that brought home Adrians to bring the score to 6-3 heading into the top of the seventh inning. The Lakers offense would find some late inning magic 1-out walk by Holland to start a rally. Tavan Shahidi (Ames, Iowa) would reach on an error by the third baseman to put runners on first and second. Two batters later, with 2-outs in the inning, Luis Cintron (Yabucao, Puerto Rico) would walk to load the bases which was then followed up by a Chad Hinkle (Rosemount, Minnesota) 2-run single to center to cut the Panther lead to 6-5. Van Oosbree would walk to reload the bases. Cintron would end up scoring the tying run on a passed ball bringing the score to 6-6 heading to the bottom half of the seveth inning. The Panther offense would, however, win the game with a walk-off single to left field and scoring the runner from second base. 

In Game 2, Martin Eckard (Victoria, Bristish Columbia) stepped up on the hill to start the game and would battle all game long and would go 5 innings and giving up 5 runs, only 4 earned while striking out 3. The Panther offense would get on the board early by scoring 5-runs in the second, third, and fourth innings before the Lakers would answer back in the fifth inning with 2-runs of their own. Spenser Larson (Eden Praire, Minnesota) and Holland would both walk with two-outs in the inning and followed up with a Shahidi 2-run double to bring the score to 5-2 after five innings. The Lakers would add another run in the sixth when Cintron would reach second base on a an error by the first baseman and an over throw which would go out of play. Cintron would come around to score and bring the score to 5-3 heading into the seventh inning. Ellsworth would score 6 runs in the seventh inning to bring the 8-run rule into effect and bring the final score to 11-3.

The Iowa Lakes Lakers will head to Storm Lake, Iowa next for a mid-week doubleheader against Buena Vista JV (0-0) on Wednesday, March 28th. Follow the @Lakersbaseball on twitter to get updates on scheduling and live in-game updates.