The Starbuck Stars held their own with strong pitching but Atwater had two pitchers that combined for a two hitter in  Sunday’s 2-1 loss at Atwater.

Mike Andreas and Jackson Hendrickson each went 1-3 for the Stars, but that was the extent of the hitting for the Stars.

The game remained knotted at 0-0 until the fourth inning when Atwater used a walk and two singles to push two runs across.

The pitchers again took over until the seventh inning when Austin Ver Steeg reached on a error and Aaron Ver Steeg walked.  With a runner in scoring position, Andreas singled on a hard ground ball to left scoring Austin Ver Steeg making the score 2-1.  

But that was all the runs the Stars could manufacture against the Atwater pitching duo of Chris Fellows and Josh Kingery.

Fellows got the win and lasted eight innings, allowing two hits and one run while striking out five and walking just one.

Josh Kingery threw one inning in relief.

Matt Gruber was tough on the mound for the Stars, going five innings and giving up just two runs on six hits.  He struck out two and walked one.

Drew Olsonawski, in relief, pitched the final three innings giving up just one hit.  

The Stars will again travel to Atwater next Sunday to take on the winner of Saturday’s New London-Spicer vs. Paynesville in the final week of County Line League playoffs.

Starbuck    000   000   100-1   2   0

Atwater      000   200   00x-2   7   1

Hitting – Starbuck: Mike Andreas 1-3 rbi, Jackson Hendrickson 1-3, Austin Ver Steeg 0-3 r b 

Atwater: David Kingery 2-4, Josh Cunningham 2-3 r, Jeff Peterson 1-3 rbi sb, Jack Peterson 1-3 rbi, Logan Straumann 1-3

Pitching (ip-h-r-er-bb-so) – Starbuck: Matt Gruber (L) 5-6-2-2-1-2, Drew Olsonawski 3-1-0-0-0-3 

Atwater: Chris Fellows (W) 8-2-1-0-1-5, Josh Kingery 1-0-0-0-1-2