Hartland Eagles Baseball

"I wanted to get right back out there," he said after throwing a complete game in Wednesday's 7-3 win at Howell. "It's good to get a win, and we hope we can stay on track."

The performance wasn't lost on Hartland coach Brian Morrison.

Mixter, a senior, has been a standout for the Eagles for three seasons, using the same template that has worked most of that time.

"I'm not really about speed," he said. "I just try to hit my spots and be consistent."

The Eagles (3-1 overall, 1-1 Kensington Valley Conference) gave Mixter all the cushion he would need in the third, when they scored four runs, one on a Mixter sacrifice fly, to give Hartland a 5-0 lead.

"Mixter's a good pitcher," Howell coach Jim Murray said. "When you get down 3-4 runs against a good pitcher, you're in trouble. He's a good pitcher who threw strikes."

Mixter helped himself at the plate, too, rapping a couple of singles and driving in a pair of runs.

But his teammates did their part, too, knocking out 11 hits and committing just one error.

"We made a couple of mistakes, stuff we can shore up in the next week," Morrison said. "But on defense we've been outstanding. If we can pitch and play defense, we'll be OK."

A young Howell team is still finding itself, but Bryce Lindberg made it interesting with a line-drive double that hit about a foot below the top of the fence.

"He hit a pea," Murray said. "We've got a lot of young guys, but we'll keep battling. We haven't been kicking the ball around, and that's the main thing. We just have to make our pitchers realize they can't walk a lot of batters. We're going to go with the kids who throw strikes."

The Highlanders used four pitchers on Wednesday.

"I've seen all my pitchers now," he said after his team's third contest in two days. "I told the kids after the game that the kids who throw strikes are the guys who are going to pitch."

Howell ended the day 0-2 overall, 0-1 in the KVC. The Highlanders led Fenton 10-2 in the nightcap of a doubleheader on Tuesday after four innings when the game was called due to darkness.

Under National Federation of High School rules, that game did not count as an official game. The NFHS stipulates that games must go five innings to be official unless a team is ahead by 15 or more runs after three innings.