Swedes
Upset #1 Warriors by Jeff Kelly, Staff Writer Bethany Messenger: Friday, April
17, 1998- Page 6
The Bethany College baseball team continued it's
run towards a conference championship with key matchups against Ottawa
and Sterling. In the first game of the contest in Ottawa, Coach Waldie
was extremely happy with the efforts of his team. "We won the first
game 8-7, and we had a really nice performance all around. The pitcher
we beat was considered the best pitcher in the conference last year.
That makes me really proud of Jeremy Cantrell who got his third win, and
Clay Witt got his second save of the year." The Swedes continued
with the hot bats, piling up five home runs.
In the second game, Coach Waldie was disappointed
with the wasted chances of scoring runs. "We had bases loaded in
the first inning and hit into a double play. After that, we didn't
even score. That eventually hurt us because Ottawa did a good job
hitting the ball, we had some terrible mistakes and ended up getting beat
11-1."
Coach Waldie was impressed with the first game,
but felt that his team mentally made some mistakes that needed to be sured
up before the matchup with first place Sterling.
Coach Waldie felt that the Swedes would matchup
well against the Warriors because of the Swedes previous wins over Sterling.
"We beat them twice in a non-conference double header. I can not
be any happier with the pitching of Clay Witt. He pitched a great
game and got us a 5-2 win. Again, we succeeded in getting crucial
two-out hits when men were in scoring position."
In the second half of the double header Jeremy Cantrell
pitched a near perfect game leading the Swedes to a win 5-1. Cantrell,
as coach Waldie explained, "made the Sterling batters look silly the whole
day."
Again, as in the earlier game, Bethany got some
key hits from all players when they really counted. The Swedes are
extremely excited about there chances. Sterling only has a two game
lead on BC, with twelve conference games to go.
First Base Coach Jake Hunter couldn't agree more
with Coach Waldie saying, "This was a tremendous performance that we needed
very much. Today we found out that we can play with anyone in conference.
We learned that two out hits really can help us
reach our goal of Conference champions.
We need to concentrate and look forward to playing
in conference from now on." Pitching Coach Dan Grudt could not be
any happier with his two pitchers on the day.
"I couldn't be any more pleased with Jeremy and
Clay. We had two crucial complete games, because are pitching rotation
was becoming pretty thin. The wind was blowing in really hard the
whole game, so we decided to let the pitchers pitch the ball and play defense.
Obviously, it worked to perfection. We are right back in conference
and we just need to remember how this feels."
The Swedes will be at home against Friends on April
18th at 1:00 p.m. This will be a double-header, so hopefully the
weather will stay the same and everyone will come support the Swedes.
"We will need the school support. Friends
started out slow in the earlier part of the season, but they are playing
as good or better then what we have seen. They always play us hard,
so we hope everyone will come out." pleaded Head Coach Mike Waldie.
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