Archive for the ‘Baseball’ Category

The Missouri Western Griffons traveled to Bolivar, Missouri, the weekend of March 5 to take on Southwest Baptist University and dominated the field as they swept them 4-0.

After losing all four games against Fort Hays the weekend before, the Griffons were looking to turn things around and improve their record.

After getting the right mindset going into the games, everything else just clicked.

Senior Trevor Hannum prepares to bat during a Western game last year. This past weekend, the Griffons swept SBU 4-0. Photo | Marty Ayers

The games Friday ended positively for the Griffons when they won 4-2 and 8-0. The good start helped raise the confidence of the team and end the meeting with the Bearcats with a four-game sweep.

“The wins helped our confidence a lot, because you never want to start out conference 0-4 and it gives us a lot of momentum leading into playing the rest of our conference series at home,” said senior pitcher Corey White.

The Griffons just simply outplayed Southern Baptist the whole weekend, having stellar pitching performances by Andrew Hebrard, John Cochran and Chris Sundvold

They also produced their first errorless game as a team, which helped immensely.

“That was big for us as a team, the wins this week helped us get closer to finding our identity,” Hannum said.

The winning streak against Southwest Baptist continued on Saturday as the Griffons pulled out two wins: 9-3 and 6-2.

Both teams got close to an equal amount of hits all four games, with Western garnishing up 38 and SBU making contact 32 times. Yet, Western was able to take advantage of their hits and contribute more runs than the Bearcats.

“Our defense played a lot better than we did against Fort Hays,” White said.

The team expects to take the momentum of the sweep and turn it into positive play for the remainder of the season. After the successful weekend, Griffon baseball improved their record to 6-4 overall and 4-4 in conference play, while Southern Baptist dropped to 2-13 overall and 1-7 in the conference.

The Griffons finally will play ball in St. Joseph territory on Saturday, March 13, against Missouri Southern.

The Missouri Western baseball program is very excited about their home games in the future. They will finally be playing at home.

A new baseball stadium is planned to be built on the Missouri Western campus. The Griffons are thrilled about the opportunity to finally play baseball in front of a home crowd here on campus.  Read more: Project three for Max Experience ready to begin