After dropping the first game of the series, the Lafayette baseball team won their next two contests at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) to win the series. They notched wins by scores of 16-10 and 2-1, respectively.
“I’m really proud of the team,” sophomore second baseman Ethan Stern said. “It’s always hard to go on the road and take a series so that was big for us.”
Stern had a big weekend, going 5-10 with a homer in the club’s two wins. In the second game of the weekend, the Leopards offense was sparked by multi-hit games from Stern, senior designated hitter Mark Glover, junior outfielder Jake Sniegocki, and freshman shortstop Justin Johnson.
In the third game, junior pitcher Brett Kreyer pitched five dominant innings, only allowing one run and striking out three. Sophomore reliever Tyler Faccenda picked up the win.
“We play best when we are having fun,” Stern said. “A big proponent of that has been the new feel to our team this year. We hype each other up and we get loud. We have a really young lineup. It’s a lot of guys that haven’t had that losing taste in their mouth. It’s the fresh mindset of let’s go out there and play our best baseball.”
After struggling to manifest much success last season, this year’s team has a different makeup. Because the team features only three seniors in the batting order, it has a young core that the team is using to their advantage. The 150th anniversary of the team has also provided fuel to that fire.
“This year we have a really good defense behind the pitchers,” Stern said. “This gives them comfort to fill up the zone. Throw strikes and pitch to contact. They know that we are going to make plays for them. Then we feed off the momentum and use that in our at bats.”
Although the team fell in the first game, the Leopards defense made just one error in the entire series. They will need to continue these efforts next weekend if they want to stay hot.
“We are at VCU who is a really good team. We need to have the same tempo that we displayed this past weekend. Play our game and if we steal two games in this series that would be huge for our program,” Stern said.