By Anna Dunlavey
The Lords traveled to Oberlin College this past weekend for a North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) matchup and came away with a split, winning one game on Saturday and one game on Sunday. “2-2 on the road at Oberlin isn’t the series win we were looking for, but we showed a ton of heart coming back to salvage the series,” Head Coach Matt Burdette wrote in an email to the Collegian. The Lords are now 16-12 on the season and 6-6 in conference play.
The Lords came out strong in the first game of the series, scoring six of their seven runs in the first inning. Oberlin tried to catch up, scoring two runs in the sixth inning to put them one away from a tie. However, Spencer Byers ’16 came out to pitch at the end of the sixth and kept the Yeomen from scoring any more runs through the seventh and final inning. Byers got the save, and starter Jesse Bogacz ’18 got his second win of the season.
Each team scored a run in the first inning of the next game, but then the teams remained in a 1-1 standoff until the seventh inning. Burdette said game two was really “a pitcher’s duel,” citing the efforts of both Oberlin’s starter Kyle Dominy and Kenyon’s starter Thomas Morris ’17. The Yeomen broke through and scored four runs in the seventh, and the game ended 5-1 in favor of the home team after nine innings.
In Sunday’s first game, the third game of the series, the Yeomen had no trouble figuring out the Lords’ pitchers. Starter Paul Henshaw ’16 had a three-up, three-down first inning, but the Yeomen came back to score eight runs off of him through the second and third innings, and even after four other Lords took the mound, Oberlin was still able to score at least one run in every subsequent inning for a final score of 16-2. Oberlin’s starter Sean Kiley pitched all seven innings and let up only one earned run, a home run from Kyle Hardacker ’15 in the sixth. The Lords’ other run was scored on a fielding error.
“It would have been easy to let the momentum carry over to game four,” Burdette said of the third game, “but our guys dug deep and won game four in a romp.” The Lords bounced back with two five-run innings. In the top of the first inning, John Nahra ’16 walked with the bases loaded to score the game’s first run, which was followed up by an RBI single from Phillip Nam ’17, a two-run double from Tyler Roldan ’17 and an RBI groundout from Max Warren ’18. In the top of the fifth, Nam got things started with a home run, Matt Von Roemer ’18 had an RBI single and Jake Dunn ’15 doubled with the bases loaded to score three, increasing his career doubles record to 57. The Lords had four more one-run innings to take a 14-4 victory. Starting pitcher Tim Krahn ’15 pitched eight innings, giving up five hits and striking out seven batters.
The Lords take a break from conference play starting tomorrow, when they will play a single game against Capital University at home on McCloskey Field at 4 p.m.