Baseball Recap: Normal West Turns Things Around After Road Loss

There's no place like home for Normal West, who bounced back after a loss on the road last Wednesday. They put the hurt on the Bloomington Purple Raiders with a sharp 7-1 victory on Friday. This was a revenge game for the Wildcats: when they faced off against the Purple Raiders last Wednesday, they had to take a 7-4 loss.

Chase Reinhart

Batters Struck Out (Career)

04/11/25 vs Bloomington	14
03/17/25 vs Morton	9
04/05/25 vs Bradley-Bourbonnais	8
03/25/25 vs Brookland	7
04/03/25 vs Centennial	3

Normal West got a great performance from Chase Reinhart as he didn't allow a single earned run and allowed only one hit while striking out 14 over six innings pitched. Those 14 strikeouts gave Reinhart a new career-high.

On the hitting side, the team relied heavily on Cooper Temples, who went 2-for-3 with three RBI, one triple, and one run. Those three RBI gave him a new career-high. The team also got some help courtesy of Torin DeLaere, who went 1-for-3 with one home run.

Normal West has been performing well recently as they've won three of their last four matches. That's provided a nice bump to their 10-4 record this season. The team dominated over that stretch too, winning by an average of 14 runs. As for Bloomington, the defeat snapped their winning streak at seven games and leaves them with a 8-3 record.

Both teams are looking forward to the support of their home crowds in their upcoming games. Normal West will face off against Dunlap at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday. The Wildcats' pitchers better be ready for this one: the Eagles have averaged an impressive 7.8 runs per game this season. As for Bloomington, they will take on Richwoods at 4:30 p.m. on Monday.