The University of Dallas baseball team secured two wins on Feb. 1, a beautiful, sunny day that lived up to the Groundhog’s prediction of an early spring. The games took place at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, TX both of which resulted in a Crusader victory.
The first game, taking place in the morning, started out with both teams gridlocked for the upper hand, but UD freshman Mavrick Martinez broke through with a double in the third inning, breaking the tie, according to UD Athletics.
Sul Ross struck back in the fourth, however, with a single into left field sending Sul Ross’ Richard Bailey from third base to home plate. To the Crusaders’ credit, the score wouldn’t remain 2-1 for long, with UD racking up the score by two runs in the fifth inning and then by four in the sixth, rounding out the score to a decisive 8-1 victory.
In the afternoon, the Crusaders stepped up to the plate again, but this time Sul Ross was prepared. UD remained in a 1-2 match until the fourth inning, when sophomore Andrew Womack delivered a grand slam over the fence, putting the Crusaders just ahead of their competition, who also had a strong inning. Although the competition pulled a triple in the ninth, they still couldn’t stack up to UD’s performance in the seventh and eighth innings, closing the game with a 13-11 win for Dallas.
“Overall we played solid, especially up the middle with Joe Vondrachek and Michael Jaquez,” Coach Erik Grafton said. “I am pleased with the amount of base runners we had and the amount of runs we scored, but I feel like we left some more runs out there and should have had more.” Overall, UD won both games against Sul Ross with scores of 8-1 and 13-11.
A game the following day against Sul Ross ended 9-11 after a good fight. The first home game of the season for the Crusaders will be Feb 7 at noon followed by another at 3 p.m. against Park University.
