The Nemaha Central baseball team improved to 11-1 on the spring season with a pair of wins at Royal Valley on Monday night.  The Thunder trailed early in both games before pouring on the offense in route to 11-5 and 7-4 wins.  Nemaha Central's offense was very consistent through the order as they scored in 12 of the 14 innings in the double-header to improve to 7-1 tied with Jeff West a top the Big 7 League standings.  Royal Valley dropped to 6-6 on the season and 3-3 in League play. 

Game 1 - Nemaha Central 11 Royal Valley 5

It was the Panthers that scored three times in the first inning to take the early lead before Ryan Hasenkamp settled in pitching for Nemaha Central and limited the Panthers to just two hits in five innings for the win.  Kurtis Niehues gave the Thunder the lead for good with a two-run homer to highlight the third inning.  Dalton Hiltibrand and Austin Gerety each had three hits for Nemaha and Derek Uphaus tossed the final two frames.  Derrick Barger and Derek Linn each tossed three plus innings in the loss for Royal Valley and Barger had two hits and did Garrett Schultz for the Panthers.

Game 2 - Nemaha Central 7 Royal Valley 4

The nightcap was back and forth early with Royal Valley again holding leads of 1-0 and 3-2 entering the third inning.  The Thunder took the lead for good in the fourth and added single tallies in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings to pull away for the sweep.  Niehues struck out six batters while yeilding four runs on five hits for the win while Neil Sudbeck tossed one-hit ball over the last three innings without allowing any runs for the save and also struck out six Panthers.  Niehues had a pair of doubles for Nemaha Central in the second game while Sudbeck had a pair of hits, including a solo home run in the seventh.  Noah Hart tossed 127 pitches in a complete game effort for the Panthers but the Royal Valley offense only mustered two hits and one run in the last five innings of the game.