Hope took their 6 game winning streak to Appleton tonight and had to go into extra innings to pull off the win. Appleton not only put their best pitcher on the mound, but he was also the fastest pitcher Hope has faced this season. Hope managed to get one run off of him, but they were shut down until late in the game when he threw his maximum pitches allowed and had to come out. Hope also had one of their hard throwers on the mound and Appleton too only had 1 run after 6 innings.
In the top of the seventh inning, Hope got base runners on second and third when Julian stepped to the plate-who struck out twice earlier in the game and wasn't really swinging the bat with confidence like he has been. The first pitch he took for a strike and then he fouled off the next one. Down to his last strike, Julian hit a line drive into center field and ended up on second base after they unsuccessfully tried to throw the runner from second base out at home. Julian was so excited to bring in the go ahead run he thought the game was over and started to run off the field until his coach told him to get back to the base! (Appleton would get last-at-bat since they were the home team.) After Julian's hit, Hope would go onto to score a couple more runs and ended up winning the game 5-1!
