BASEBALL HAWKS LOSE THREE STRAIGHT
The Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks men’s baseball team faced the University of Toronto Varsity Blues and the Western Mustangs this weekend and failed to earn a win in any of the three games.
The 9-7 loss to the Blues and the 6-3 and 8-2 defeats at the hands of the Mustangs drop the Hawks to fourth place in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA).
“It should be a good wake up call,” said catcher Chris Pittaway.
“We can’t go into a game with the comfort level we have been.”
The Hawks traveled to Toronto for their first match-up of the weekend on Saturday against the Varsity Blues.
As the last placed team in the OUA, the Blues took a surprising 9-7 win.
Third-year pitcher David Canavan had one of his weaker appearances, giving up five runs in just over three innings.
The Hawks managed to start a rally against a struggling Toronto pitcher in the seventh inning, drawing four walks and scoring five runs.
However, the comeback fell short and the Blues came out on top with a score of 9-7.
On Sunday, the Hawks took on the Mustangs in a double header at their alternative home diamond at Laurier’s Brantford campus.
In game one, team captains Pittaway and Scott Mahn produced a pair of early runs for the Hawks.
Mahn set things up with a single hit and a stolen base.
After Pittaway singled, he sacrificed a steal to distract the Mustangs and bring Mahn in to score.
In the fourth inning, Western capitalized on errors by Mahn, shortstop Pat Kropf, and Pittaway nailing down a 6-3 victory.
“I think there were more mental errors than they were physical,” explained head coach Scott Ballantyne.
Third-year Brad Bach started on the mound for the Hawks in the second game of the double header, with rookie Trent Barwick coming in for his second relief appearance of the weekend, and Josh Robinson finishing things off.
In the end the Hawks couldn’t match the powerhouse Mustangs who delivered strong at bat, and made the Hawks go three up, three down for two innings.
“They didn’t make any mistakes defensively,” commented Ballantyne.
“They out pitched and out hit us.”
Despite the three game skid, designated hitter Jesse Milanovich hit well for Laurier, earning six hits and three RBIs on eight at bats over the weekend.
But overall, Laurier’s batting lineup struggled to deliver to their full potential, and the large number of errors strongly affected the end results.
“We have two solid days of practice coming up before our next game, so we will take advantage of that,” said Ballantyne.
While Zagrodny added, “We just had some tough breaks and I think we’ll come out strong next week.”
