After five straight loses, the Thunderbirds baseball team earned its redemption with a three-game sweep of the Oregon Institute of Technology Owls at home.
“Things weren’t exactly going our way in the past couple of weeks, but we wanted to come out and fight for our wins and we were able to do that this weekend,” said Bruce Yari, T-Bird's first baseman.
UBC played its first double-header on Friday, coming out with 2-1 and 11-1 wins. In the first game, the T-Birds had an early 1-0 deficit before tying the score in the final inning and coming out with the win in the additional frame. Star pitcher Alex Webb had a dominant performance, earning an impressive 11 strikeouts. The second game saw the T-Birds win in the seventh inning by the 10-run mercy rule.
In the last game on Saturday, the T-Birds wrapped up the series with a 7-0 shutout win.
UBC took the initial lead in the bottom of the fourth frame when Anthony Cusati, who scored three RBIs in the previous game, sent a fly ball to centre field to drive home teammate Lucas Soper from second base. On the next play, a throwing error by Oregon pitcher Tyler Bennett allowed Brendan Rose to add another run.
With the 2-0 lead, the UBC saw an explosion of runs in the bottom of the seventh. After pinch running for Vinny Martin at first base, Griffy Goyer scored on a line drive by Mike Orosz to the left field. On the next play, Max Hollingworth, who pinch ran for Orosz, returned home from second base as Kyle McComb singled.
The T-Birds did not finish there. After Owls pitcher John Schulz hit Tyler Enns at bat, Darian Benanua — who replaced Schulz on the mound — had a throwing error that enabled Enns to advance to second and McComb to clinch the third. Enns and McComb scored two plays later as Yari singled to the right field. Geoff Ehresman also added a run to secure the 7-0 win for UBC.
“I could tell, even though we weren’t punching anything across earlier, that our at-bats were much better than they were last week,” said Chris Pritchett, UBC's head coach. “Eventually, we broke through and I was very happy with the way we played offensively.”
Apart from the scoring, Pritchett also attributes the T-Birds’ victory to the team’s performance on field and on the mound. In the seven innings that he pitched for, Connor Noble gave up only three hits and struck out four.
“The pitching was very good and our defence was solid. There wasn’t a lot of threats that we had to put out the fire, if you will,” said Pritchett.
UBC now holds a conference record of 9-6 and will remain on the home field next week to host Simpson University Red Hawks.
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