Kansas opened Big 12 play with a 9-1 win over Baylor on a blustery Friday night at Hoglund Ballpark. Dominic Voegele shut down Baylor throughout the night, and the Jayhawks had a pair of big innings to open up the game.

Voegele retired the first 10 batters he faced, getting off to a much stronger start than his last time around. Against Milwaukee, he surrendered three runs in a 39-pitch first inning. It took Voegele three innings to get to 40 pitches against Baylor, striking out four in his first three innings with command of all his pitches.

“Just executing pitches, throwing it wherever I want to,” Voegele said of the biggest difference from his last start. “I had all four pitches working today rather than last weekend, probably didn’t have all four working as well as they should be.”

Baylor scratched just one run across against Voegele, an unearned one via a throwing error in the sixth. Despite sitting at 96 pitches, Voegele came back out for the seventh and retired the Bears in order. The Preseason Big 12 Pitcher of the Year played the part on Friday, capping off his night at 7.0 innings, allowing three hits and striking out six.

“100 [pitches] is this just kind of mythical number that somebody put on years ago, and Brandon [Scott] and I look way more at where’s the stuff trending,” Dan Fitzgerald said postgame. “His stuff was trending up.”

Kansas got to Baylor starter Ethan Calder early, who had done a tremendous job for the Bears early this season. Sawyer Smith got the scoring started with an RBI groundout.

Ian Francis made it 3-0 with a mammoth home run over the left-field fence. Francis has caught fire to provide the Jayhawks with great offensive production behind the plate, going 7/13 with seven RBI in his last three starts heading into Friday’s game. The Youngstown State transfer went 2/2 with two extra-base hits and also walked twice against the Bears.

“He’s really turned himself into a plus offensive player,” Fitzgerald said. “That ball was absolutely hammered that he hit and, you know, just was ready for it and executed… He’s a great worker and a great teammate and guys like that usually get rewarded.”

After adding a run in the fourth, Kansas broke the game open with three more runs in the fifth. The Jayhawks chased Calder from the game after he opened the inning by hitting Brady Ballinger, and the bats instantly got to reliever Cole Stasio. Brady Counsell hit a 2-RBI ground-rule double, then Smith made the score 7-0 with a ground-rule double of his own.

“Fitz preaches getting to their bullpen, get the starter out early, see pitches,” Ian Francis said. “That’s the kinda team we are. We don’t swing at balls. We get our pitches and we try and do damage with them.”

Thaniel Trumper tosses a scoreless eight before Kansas added two more runs to hamper Baylor’s chances at a comeback in the bottom frame. Tommy Barth singled up the middle to make the score 9-1 heading into the ninth.

Baylor threatened in the ninth against Trumper, loading the bases with one out. However, Ty Johnson hit a rocket double play to Chase Diggins to end the game. The Jayhawks improved to 16-2 on the season and 1-0 in Big 12 play.

KSHB 41 reporter Ryan Gamboa covers Miami County in Kansas and Cass County in Missouri. He also covers agricultural topics. Share your story idea with Ryan.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced $1 billion in cuts to COVID-era food programs supporting locally sourced food to charitable food banks and schools.

Harvesters Community Food Network is one of many organizations impacted by the cuts.

Kansas City USDA food program cuts could leave some without enough food

“In our case, it was about $1 million we received in each round of funding,” CEO and President Stephen Davis said. “Over a period of two years, it gave us about $1.5 million in produce.”

Harvesters Community Food Network serves 27 counties in and around the Kansas City metro area on both sides of the state line.

According to Davis, the organization only received funding for its services in Kansas, a partnership it created with the Kansas Department of Agriculture.

“This was a Kansas-based program and we were working with Kansas farmers to procure that food,” said Davis.

Out of the $1 billion slashed, $660 million funded the Local Food for Schools program (LFS) and the remaining $420 million funded the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement (LFPA).

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Harvesters was in the LFPA program that provided funding that was paid directly to Kansas farmers for prodsuce, dairy, and protein.

“In many cases they were startups, they were small scale farmers, they were diverse farmers,” David said. “They were disadvantaged in some sort of way. This was really a lifeline program today to help give them a distant source of funding.”

Harvesters takes in nearly 30 millions pounds of food each year.

It’s relying on current donors to make up the deficit, while the organization remains concerned about the impact cuts have on local food growers.

“Our hope would have been that this would’ve been continued,” Davis said. “It’s been proven it works and the foundation was laid to continue to show the success of that program.”

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Government spending cuts across numerous sectors has the Missouri Farm Bureau reading between the lines.

“The new administration is taking a whole government look at spending,” said Missouri Farm Bureau President Garrett Hawkins. “Given that the interest on the debt exceeds the national defense budget, I think it behooves us that we take a look at government spending; I think including the US Department of Agriculture,” Hawkins said.

He’s and other Farm Bureau members are meeting with Missouri’s Congressional delegration on Capitol Hill this week to push for new legislation.

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“I think it’s important for viewers to know we are two years past the Food and Farm Bill,” Hawkins said. “That’s one of the key issues that our farmers are talking about this week on Capitol Hill, is the need to update and reauthorize the Farm Bill that impacts all Americans.”

The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, also known as The Farm Bill, is passed every five years in Congress.

The bipartisan piece of legislation is a safety net for producers, numerous programs that include crop insurance, conservation, and agriculture research programs.

The 2018 bill is $428 billion in total dollars; $325.8 million or 76%., funds nutrition programs like SNAP.

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“What you’re seeing now is a look at pandemic era spending and government officials taking a look and saying, ‘Okay, perhaps we should pause and take a look at these programs and figure out how to bring them in line, recognizing that resources are going to be needed to update all programs as part of a Farm Bill,’” added Hawkins. “Truly, for our members, we expect questions to be asked on all programs. We can be patient while advocating for a new, modern Farm Bill.”

The Farm Bill is typically passed every five years and is updated to reflect the current economy. The 2018 legislation expired in 2023. The same funding has been extended through orders of Congress to maintain 2018 funding.

“The world has changed since 2018,” Hawkins said. “We have lived through a pandemic, we saw supply chains upended in the pandemic, we saw the most rapid rise in inflation that we have seen in decades. “Everything we touch in agriculture costs much more, prices that we see at the farm gate are dramatically lower for the last couple of years. We have to update a farm safety net that reflects modern times.”

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Hawkins says navigating the USDA cuts could push forward new legislation that could impact all Americans.

Both Harvesters and the Farm Bureau understand a new Farm Bill is an important issue.

For Davis, the question is, at what cost must that be achieved and it shouldn’t come at the consequence of pulling back programs like LFPA or other programs.

Kansas Farmers Union President Donn Teske provided KSHB 41 with a statement regarding the recent USDA funding cuts:

Kansas Farmers Union is disappointed in the recent cuts to USDA’s Local Food Purchasing Assistance (LFPA) and Local Food for Schools (LFS) programs. The abrupt cancellation now threatens to upend all of the progress that farms, food hubs, schools, and food banks had built through relationships, infrastructure, and increased production around these programs. We strongly urge the administration to refocus and promote farm policy that promotes local and regional markets for the well being of all producers and consumers.”

The Farm Bill will continue to make news and KSHB 41 will monitor any changes.

For the second time in five days, Kansas Basketball will take on Arizona in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament.

The Jayhawks are coming off a hard fought, overtime victory against UCF and are hoping to keep the ball rolling.

Following the overtime thriller Kansas Head Coach, Bill Self, spoke on what makes playing the Wildcats for the second in five days challenging but also beneficial.

“It’s going to be challenge because they’ve got some really good guys and a really good team,” said Self. “The benefit is that from a preparation standpoint, we are going to be more familiar with them than we normally would.”

In the Senior Saturday matchup, Arizona took the Jayhawks to the wire in Allen Fieldhouse. Kansas was able to pull off the upset 83-76 but it wasn’t easy.

“I actually thought on Saturday we had four seniors play very well and it was barely enough in our building,” said Self. “So it’s going to take a great energy type game and we’re going to have to play big.”

The Wildcats play hard-nosed basketball with outstanding guard play from Caleb Love and Jaden Bradley. The two combined for 37 points on Saturday and were rarely seen off the court.

“We’ve got to be able to guard the ball better than we did on Saturday,” said Self. “I thought Saturday was a really good basketball game that was well played by both teams.”

Kansas hasn’t been great down the stretch, posting a 6-6 record over its last 12 games. Thursday’s rematch is going to require toughness and tenacity in order to keep advancing towards the Big 12 title.

“The biggest thing for me and I think our guys is that, it was a great effort by us on Saturday and it was barely enough, so we’ve got to bring at least that plus more on Thursday,” said Self.

The Jayhawks and the Wildcats are set to tipoff at 8:30 p.m. CT on Thursday, and the winner will advance to the semifinals to take on either Texas Tech or Baylor.