Baseball weekend double-header ends in two victories against Midland, 10-2 and 14-4
Senior infielder Jayden Adams (8) takes a swing at the ball and prepares to run to first base.
Photo credit: Courtney Wright
By Isaac Dawson
The Concordia Baseball team swept their double header against the Midland University Warriors this Sunday with final scores of 10-2 and 14-4.
The wind today looked much better than it did in Concordia’s Saturday games against the Warriors, blowing out past the outfield and greatly assisting the Bulldog’s ability to pull ahead in each game. Coach Ryan Dupic commented on the offense.
“Offensively our guys were really good; it was an offensive day today,” he said. “Yesterday we were playing more defensively, the wind was blowing in. Today the wind was blowing out and our guys just did a terrific job offensively.”
Concordia’s first inning of the first game set the tone for the afternoon, junior Jaiden Quinn and freshman Matthew Rhoades both pulling off an impressive home run each to take home four clean runs to Midland’s zero. The Bulldogs had three great offensive innings throughout the game, the majority of their hits and every point taken in the first, fourth, and fifth innings.
Junior Ty Nekoliczak, senior Joey Grabanski, and senior Alec Blakestad all slammed the ball out of the park in the fifth, crushing any hope of a Midland revival from their one and only run until they finally earned their second in the seventh inning. This was in large part credited to Concordia’s pitcher, junior Braxton Greenburg, throwing for all seven innings, getting 10 strikeouts, and allowing for only three hits, two runs, and two errors.
The second game started out much slower than the first, and it looked like the Warriors might be able to take the lead until the fourth inning. They stayed just ahead of Concordia at 2-3 until the Bulldogs blew past them by scoring six runs on four hits and doing it again in the sixth inning on five hits, while Midland dragged behind to take one point for the rest of the game.
Dupic made a comment on the offensive performance in the second game.
“That was such a big burst for us to give us a bit of momentum and to allow us to be a little bit aggressive there, you get the ball rolling and once we were able to get into their bullpen it really helped us to get some momentum going in the game,” he said.
Rhoades, Grabanski, Blakestad and senior Jay Adams all earned another homer in the second game, bringing Grabanski close to a breakthrough in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics home run record at 76 while the record stands at 77. Adams is near the top in Concordia history with the third most career RBIs, breaking 200 on Saturday. Grabanski hit in the most RBIs at five and Blakestad took the most hits, also at five.
