Bulldog baseball team defeats Briar Cliff in double header, 1-0 and 9-1
Junior outfielder Bronx Lewis takes off from home plate after hitting the ball (photo from previous game).
Photo credit: Cohen Carpenter
By Isaac Dawson
The Concordia Nebraska baseball team swept their double header against the Briar Cliff University Chargers Monday with scores of 1-0 and 9-1.
The Bulldogs had a weekend filled with victory after their previous sweep of the Waldorf Warriors on Friday with 15-9 and 21-5 slugfests.
Game one saw little action from either team. The first four innings had several outfield hits, but the lone run that was the game’s salvation came from senior Ty Nekoliczak hitting a single up the middle. This allowed junior Zackery Day to collect a game-winning run.
Graduate student Alex Johnson pitched for all seven innings of game one. He threw for only two hits for no runs and achieved 13 strikeouts.
The sequel was much more eventful in terms of points. It had a scarier start with a run from the Chargers in the first inning during which the runner tripped hard coming into third, recovering quickly. The Bulldogs saw this and promptly responded with a three-run homer from senior Brad Hallock.
Briar Cliff couldn’t pull off the comeback while Concordia got at least one run in three of the remaining five innings. In the second inning freshman Cade Vanis crossed the plate off of a single by Nekoliczak and a fielding error. Point number five came from another homer, this time by sophomore Matthew Rhoades. The bases were loaded with two outs, but the Bulldogs weren’t quite able to capitalize on it before the changing of sides.
The fourth inning saw nobody take any points, but the fifth featured another Hallock homer. After Nekoliczak and Day pulled off another combo RBI with a Nekoliczak single to center field, Hallock hit another homer to left center for another three runs.
Neither team pulled off any more points, and the game ended early at 9-1 after Briar Cliff’s top of the seventh attempt to pull off a spectacular comeback.
Senior Braxton Greenburg pitched for the majority of the game at 6.1 innings, while junior Daiten Schmidt came in for 0.2 innings to close out the game. Greenburg threw for only one hit for one run and eight strikeouts. Schmidt had no hits or errors and one strikeout in his short time on the mound.
Concordia’s record now stands at 22-8 overall and 10-2 in the Great Plains Athletic Conference. The Bulldogs’ next double header is against the Hastings Broncos back home at the Plum Creek Ballpark on Friday, Apr. 4 at 6 p.m.
