Epworth Western Dubuque hurler Isaac Then baffles Davenport Assumption in Iowa Class 3A baseball state championship game

By John Bohnenkamp 

IOWA CITY — From beginning to end, this game belonged to Isaac Then.

The Epworth Western Dubuque left-hander didn’t quite plan it that way.

He figured he would start the Class 3A state baseball championship game against Davenport Assumption, give all he could for five or so innings, then turn it over to the bullpen. 

One hundred and two pitches and seven innings later, Then was done, and the Bobcats had their first championship.

Then threw a two-hitter, striking out nine, as the Bobcats won 7-1.

“I started strong,” Then said, “And I finished strong.”

Then has been the Bobcats’ ace, going 8-0 with wins over seven ranked teams.

“He’s a warrior,” senior Tucker Naumann said. “He’s a dude. He’s been doing that all year.”

Then was closing in on the 110-pitch limit when he started the seventh inning, but he wasn’t tired.

“I felt really good,” he said.

His coach knew that.

“Oh, he wanted this,” Casey Bryant said. “I don’t think I could have dragged him out of there until he got to 110.”

The 102nd pitch was a popout to shortstop Nick Bryant, the coach’s son. Then raised his arms at the final out as his teammates mobbed him.

“He was really on,” Assumption second baseman Jay Costello said. “We couldn’t figure him out there.”

Assumption, the top seed in the tournament, had won by the 10-run rule in its first two games here, and Casey Bryant, whose team was the second seed, knew to beat the Knights, they had to be like the Knights.

“They just put so much pressure on you,” Bryant said. “Our goal was to beat them at their game.”

The pressure by the Bobcats was relentless. They had runners on base in every inning, scoring in five of the seven innings.

“They said when it rains, it pours,” Assumption head coach Greg Thissen said. “Man, it was pouring there for a while.”

Naumann’s sacrifice fly scored Jake Goodman with a first-inning run. Then’s bases-loaded single drove in two runs in the third. An error in the fourth brought in the fourth run, and then Goodman’s double in the fifth pushed the lead to 5-0.

The Knights had runners on first and second in the first and fourth innings but couldn’t score either time. Then struck out Chance Dreyer and Michael Ray to end the first, then an F-8-6 double play ended the fourth.

Assumption’s only run came in the sixth, when Dreyer singled home John Argo.

“No free bases, no errors,” Bryant said. “We wanted to make them string together hits.”

All that was left for Then to do was finish the job. When he was done, his plan had a different look, but it looked good.

“We didn’t play perfect,” Bryant said. “But we were solid.”

Bryant knew what the title meant.

“I’m an old-school coach,” he said. “But on that last out, there were a lot of tears.”