ROUGH DAY: Norse Baseball Drops Doubleheader

VERO BEACH, Florida---The Bay College men's baseball team lost a pair of games on Wednesday, falling to Eastern Gateway Community College of Ohio, 13-1 and 11-3, at Historic Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida.

The Norse fell to 1-7 on the season-opening trip.

"I'm disappointed," Norse Coach Mike Pankow said. "You're gonna have that when you don't show up to the park to play. We were flat in the first game. You could tell that we didn't have the energy in the dugout that we had yesterday. It showed on the field."

With so many games in such a short period of time, it has been all hands on-deck when it comes to pitching.

The Norse used four pitchers in both games, with Ryan Clark, who was not recruited as a pitcher, getting the ball for an inning in both games.

In the opener, Dane Vandenhueval got the ball and made it into the fourth inning before leaving with the bases loaded and the team trailing, 4-0.

A scary moment in the fourth inning when third baseman Lucas Weinert went for a ground ball and it hopped up and hit him in the chin, opening up a big gash. Trainer Brad Landis took care of the cut, and Weinert sat out the rest of the afternoon.

Mark Zhang came on to pitch during that fourth inning and hit two straight batters to force in runs, and he walked in another. Then in the fifth inning, Zhang hit another batter and gave up an RBI double to Noah Laster.

Alek Santure relieved him and was greeted by a long three-run homer off the bat of Zac Johnson. Clark threw a scoreless seventh inning.

Bay College's only run came in the fifth inning when Tyler Skufca singled home Owen Hanson, who was hit by a pitch with one out in that inning.

The second game got off to a better start as the Norse grabbed a 2-0 lead in the first inning.

The Gators committed two errors in the inning to allow one run to score, and Ty Ziegler had a run-scoring single with two outs (and two strikes) to make it 2-0.

Mason Korhonen got the start for the Norse, throwing four innings, allowing three runs on six hits. He left with the Norse trailing, 3-2, thanks to an RBI double by Jerimiah Papa and a sacrafice fly by Doug Painter. Then in the fifth inning, Bay tied the game with another two-out hit, this time by Popelka, driving home fellow Eskymo Tyler Skufca.

It was just the second hit of the game for Bay, but it tied things up. Owen Hanson came on to pitch the bottom of the fifth and walked the bases loaded before giving up a two-run, two-out double by Andrew Wess that made it a 5-3 EGCC lead.

Then in the sixth inning, the floodgates opened, with the Gators scoring six runs to pull away for the 11-3 win.The highlight of that outburst was a three-run double by Grant Williams that took any remaining suspense out of the game.

Bay College (1-7) returns to action on Thursday with two more games in Fort Pierce, and then wraps up action with a single game Friday morning.

Click the thumbnails in the ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS box above to see photos, video clips taken by Brad Landis.