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Baseball splits home doubleheader

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The Hillsdale College baseball team played a slew of games this week, splitting two games with the Findlay University Oilers last night after dropping all four games to the Northwood University Timberwolves over Easter weekend.

The Chargers used a combination of mammoth home runs and stellar pitching to defeat Findlay 5-3 in the first half of Wednesday’s home doubleheader.

After Hillsdale manufactured a run in the bottom of the first, Findlay took the lead with two runs in the top of the fifth.  Findlay’s lead was short lived, however, as Hillsdale scored four runs in the bottom half of the inning on home runs by junior Michael O’Sullivan, junior Connor Bartlett, and sophomore Ethan Wiskur.

The Chargers held onto this lead the rest of the game, allowing only one more run in the top of the sixth inning.  Junior Chris McDonald threw all seven innings, allowing only three earned runs. McDonald benefited from a Charger defense that did not commit an errors.

The second game on Wednesday was a reversal of roles, as Findlay jumped out to an early lead and a Hillsdale comeback fell short as the Oilers won 6-3.

Findlay scored the first four runs of the game, and answered a sixth inning Charger run with one run in each of the seventh and eighth innings.

Hillsdale plated two runs in the bottom of the eighth after a single from Bartlett and a double by junior Tad Sobieszczanski.

The comeback effort was thwarted by Findlay junior Alex Williams who struck out three, collecting his fifth save of the season.

Hillsdale’s win on Wednesday snapped a six game skid for the Chargers, which was extended over Easter weekend when they were swept by Northwood in a four-game set.

The first game of Good Friday went to the Timberwolves 7-5, but there were bright spots for the Chargers. Perhaps the brightest of these was  the successful return of senior infielder Vinny Delicata.

Delicata, who had been out since early March with a strained oblique, went 3-3, driving in a run and scoring one himself in Friday’s first loss.

“Over the three weeks I was out I had to find other ways to help the team,” Delicata said. “So I am thankful and blessed to be able to jump right back into things and play pretty well.”

Unfortunately, four sixth-inning runs for the Chargers, driven in on singles from Delicata, sophomore Eric Shankin, and Sobieszczanski were not enough to draw them back even with the Timberwolves.

A combination of explosive bats and untimely errors by the Chargers led to an outpouring of runs for the Timberwolves as they defeated the Chargers 14-4 in the second half of Friday’s doubleheader.

“We’ve talked about it all season, but we really need to work on forcing guys to earn all of their runs,” Theisen said.  “At this level you have to take more free bases than you give if you want to win very many games.”

Saturday displayed two tight games, the first of which went to Northwood 3-2 on the back of a terrific pitching performance by sophomore Logan Meadors who gave up no earned runs on only four hits in seven innings.

Hillsdale had a youngster of their own throw an impressive game as freshman Will Kruse gave up up only three runs on six hits over 5 2-3 innings.

Bartlett and sophomore Ethan Wiskur both had sacrifice flies in the game to account for Hillsdale’s two runs.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking loss of the weekend came in the series finale as the Timberwolves hit a walkoff single to complete an impressive comeback and the sweep.

The Chargers scored five of the game’s first six runs and took this four-run lead into the bottom of the eighth, but Northwood tallied four runs to pull back even.

After the Chargers went down in order in the top half of the ninth, Northwood combined a dropped third strike, a sacrifice bunt, and consecutive singles to plate the winning run.

“It was definitely frustrating,” freshman Phil Carey said. “We were down after the first three games and everybody saw that game as an opportunity to get back into a rhythm.”

Carey threw an exceptional game, pitching seven innings in which he gave up only one run on five hits.

“My goal that game was really to just fill the strike zone with fastballs and strikeouts.  If you can do that hitters tend to get themselves out,” Carey said.

The Chargers continue GLIAC play this weekend, hosting Ohio Dominican for a four game set.