Sports
Clarion splits doubleheader against Slippery Rock
Junior Ken Morgan is batting .252 with five RBIs and one home run for the Golden Eagles this season. (Archive Photo / The Clarion Call)
The Clarion Golden Eagles baseball team came away with a hard-earned win on Saturday, April 3, against Slippery Rock University.
The Golden Eagles improved their record to 5-16 by defeating The Rock in game one of the doubleheader, with a score of 4-2.
The Golden Eagles pitching staff garnered most of the credit for the win. Junior Brandon Slater threw 6.1 innings and got awarded his first win of the season.
Slater gave up two runs on seven hits, and managed to strike out four Slippery Rock batters.
Clarion’s senior Eric Panko came in to pitch after Slater, and struck out the last two batters of the game.
Panko was awarded his first save.
The Golden Eagles offense worked like a well-oiled machine throughout game one.
Junior transfer Jerico Weitzel, junior Josh Beimel, junior Matt Rossi, sophomore Bill Hasson and junior Mark White each had one hit.
They batted in four runs combined.
Rossi batted in Beimel in the first inning of the game, setting the tone for the rest of the contest.
Shortstop Weitzel also batted in a run with a single in the bottom of the fifth inning.
Slippery Rock punched out a total of eight hits in game one.
However, they were unable to convert those hits into the runs they needed, and fell to the Golden Eagles.
However, game two of Saturday’s doubleheader would turn out differently for the Clarion squad.
The Rock retaliated by no-hitting the Golden Eagles, and cashing in seven runs of their own.
Sophomore Seth Peterson started on the mound for Clarion, and pitched for two solid, hitless innings before faltering in the top of the third.
Slippery Rock’s Kevin Jovanovich kicked off his team’s offensive run with a single against Peterson.
A wild pitch and another Slippery Rock RBI would account for the other two runs of the inning.
The highlight of game two, however, was Joby Lapkowicz’s pitching performance for The Rock.
He threw an entire seven-inning game, without ceding a single hit or run.
He walked four batters through those innings.
The Golden Eagles offense shouldered some of the blame for the second-game loss, stranding five runners on base.
The Golden Eagles have 10 remaining doubleheaders in the season.
This includes a streak of three away games.
One of those doubleheaders will come against Mansfield, an opponent Clarion has faced in the past with little success.
The team hopes to turn its luck around next time.
With a conference record of 3-3, the Golden Eagles will have to fight their way through the rest of the season in order to get a berth in the PSAC playoffs.
If they emulate the success they managed in game one of Saturday’s doubleheader, the Golden Eagles are headed to a promised land the team has not experienced for many
seasons.
The Golden Eagles baseball team will be back in action on Friday, April 8, when it hosts California University of Pennsylvania for a doubleheader.
First pitch of the game is set for 1 p.m at Memorial Field.
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