Pictured: Jared Demkowicz (C’20). Photo courtesy of sewaneetigers.com.
By Harry Davis
Staff Writer
On Saturday, February 16, the Sewanee baseball team defeated the MacMurray College Highlanders 10-0 and 8-1 to start a nine-game homestand.
The Tigers started the season with two wins, one against Guilford College 7-3, and one against Berea College 8-0 before they were defeated by Huntingdon College 6-1. In their two victories, Sewanee stifled the opponent’s offense as their opponents only scored in two of 19 innings total.
In the loss to Huntingdon College, the Tigers went down 3-0 after the first inning and struggled offensively for the rest of the game. Last year the Highlanders held a record of 14 wins and 24 losses. MacMurray College despite their record averaged 9.4 hits per game compared to their opponents 8.6.
Jared Demkowicz (C’20) led the tigers into a three run streak by the end of the first inning. For the next three innings the score stayed the same before Chris McNulty (C’20) singled to left field and Demkowicz scored again to extend the lead to 4-0. In the fifth inning Sewanee put two players on base early and Demkowicz hit a three-run homer. Garrett Liebe (C’21) and Sully McCreery (C’22) scored to push the lead to 7-0. Sewanee scored three more times to bring the final score to 10-0.
The second game of the series began similar to the first, neither team scored for the first inning. In the second inning the Tiger’s offense continued where they left off in the previous game, Max Murray (C’20) and Jack Galanek (C’21) scored. McNulty doubled to center field as Huffman and Demkowicz scored to make the score 4-0.
After another Sewanee run in the fourth inning, MacMurray finally scored in the sixth inning to make the score 5-1. The seventh inning started with three quick outs against MacMurray College. Then the Tiger’s offense started to put people on base before Riley Brandvold (C’19) tripled to center field which allowed Trey Akins and McNulty to score as Brandvold scored on a throwing error by the Highlanders. The game ended with a decisive 8-1 victory for the Tigers.
In the first game Trey Holland (C’21) threw an incredible game with only two hits on 11 strikeouts. Overall, it was a dominant series for the Tigers as they had 20 hits to the Highlanders’ four and improve to four wins and one loss on the season.
The Tigers will continue their homestand against Carroll College with two games on Saturday, February 23, and one game on Sunday, February 24.