It was a warm and sunny day at Marcusen Park Friday and that was great news for the Hayfield baseball team and their pitcher.

Hayfield senior Drew Streightiff was dominant as he pitched a three-hit shutout while striking out 14 as the Vikings beat Lyle-Pacelli 4-0 in a game with subsection seeding implications.

Streightiff was rolling from the start as he retired 12 of the first 13 hitters he faced.

“The warmer it gets, the better I throw,” Streightiff said. “I’m not much of a cold weather pitcher. It felt good and Connor [Nelson] was calling good pitches. This was a huge win.”

Streightiff went 2-for-2 at the plate and he doubled in a run in the first inning, but his pitching was the key to the win as held down LP (4-1 overall), which had scored at least 13 runs in its first four contests.

“On a nice warm day, Drew can throw about as hard as anybody in the area and he did that today,” Hayfield head coach Kasey Krekling said. “Drew is a very good pitcher when he focuses, throws strikes and uses all of his pitches. That’s what we expect of him.”

The Vikings (4-3 overall) manufactured a couple of runs in the top of the fourth to go up 3-0 when Connor Nelson stole home and Carter Pesch scored as the Athletics tried to throw out Ben Czaplewski at second base on a steal.

“We were trying to make things happen,” Krekling said. “We weren’t doing it too well with the bats so we got aggressive and good things turned out.”

LP’s Jordan Hart struck out eight and allowed eight hits in seven innings in his second start of the year. LP head coach Brock Meyer was pleased with how Hart threw, considering he didn’t pitch much last season.

“They’re a good hitting team, but he threw strikes today and got ahead of hitters. He’s going to be big for us and he’s going to have to pitch like that for us every time. He throws hard,” Meyer said. “It’s encouraging [to play Hayfield close], but we’d like to win. We’ll probably see them again down the road in the playoffs and it was a good learning experience. That was the fastest pitcher we’ve seen all year.”

Although the Vikings play in the HVL, which is loaded with good baseball teams and the Athletics play in the SEC, which has a little less competition, Krekling wasn’t going to let his team overlook LP. He put a lot of emphasis on what was the third game this week for Hayfield against a subsection opponent.

“When I was in high school I knew about Lyle-Pacelli and they were a team that we always saw their record was pretty down,” Krekling said. “Since I took over three years ago, they’ve always been a pretty good team and they keep getting better every year. If I didn’t think they were good, I wouldn’t have thrown our best pitcher today and it was a good game.”

Streightiff also had plenty of respect for his opponent.

“[Daniel] Bollingberg and Hart are good hitters, so I had to be really careful with them and hit spots,” he said.

Hayfield 1 0 0 2 1 0 0 — 4 8 2

LP 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 — 0 3 1

Hayfield pitching: Drew Streightiff (W), 7 IP, 3 H, 1 BB, 0 R, 14 K

Hayfield hitting: Cole Kruger, 2-for-4, 3 SB, R; Cam Rutledge, 0-for-3, R, HBP; JB Stackhouse, 1-for-3, RBI; Streightiff, 2-for-2, double, RBI, BB; Connor Nelson, 0-for-3, R, SB; Carter Pesch, 1-for-3, R, SB; Ben Czaplewski, 0-for-1, SB, BB, HBP; Matt Walters, 1-for-3; Jacob Steiner, 1-for-3, SB

LP pitching: Jordan Hart (L), 7 IP, 8 H, 2 BB, 4 R, 3 ER, 8 K, 2 HBP

LP hitting: Daniel Bollingberg, 0-for-3; Jordan Cotter, 0-for-3; Hart, 1-for-3, SB; Matt Kasel, 0-for-3; Lee Bauer, 1-for-3; Kevin Juenger, 1-for-2, BB; Lucas Klabunde, 0-for-3; Braden Kocer, 0-for-3; Patrick Murphy, 0-for-3