By BY BRUCE HIXON – SPORTS EDITOR
Losing two of three games may not have been what the Jefferson Davis Community College Warhawks baseball team set out to do for their home weekend series against the Southern Union Bison, but they did close out the series on a positive note when they posted an 8-2 win in the second game of a doubleheader.
JDCC's victory kept the Warhawks above .500 for the season at 10-9, but more importantly the win snapped a four-game slide in the Alabama Community College Conference after a 4-0 league start. It also dealt Southern Union its first league loss, as the Bison fell to 14-3 overall and 4-1 in ACCC play.
JDCC snapped a 1-1 tie with a four-run uprising in the bottom of the third inning. Singles by Steven Bingert and Ryan Kelley preceded a two-run single by Ben Green and RBI singles by Daniel Hodge and Kyle Snedeker.
A single by Ryan Gray, a walk to Green and an RBI single by Snedeker enabled the Warhawks to stretch that lead to 6-1 in the fifth.
Southern Union got one of those runs back in the top of
the sixth, but the Warhawks added a couple of insurance markers in the bottom half of
the frame when Bingert and Green came through with RBI singles.
Bingert led JDCC for the game with three hits and an RBI, while Green had a pair of hits and drove in three runs. Snedeker had a pair of hits and two RBIs, while Hodge had two hits and one RBI. Gray picked up a hit and an RBI, while Kelley and Andrew Sawyer also had a hit.
Harrison Szuch went the distance on a five-hitter to get the win. Szuch struck out four and walked only one in his complete game effort.
Southern Union stormed back for a 14-5 win in game one.
JDCC had a 2-1 lead through five innings on the strength of an RBI sacrifice fly by Greg Gomez and an RBI single by Gray in the third inning.
That lead held until the top of the sixth when the Bison sent 13 batters to the plate and scored seven runs to take an 8-2 lead. Southern Union strung together six singles, four walks and took advantage of a key error in
that frame. The error was one of six the Warhawks had in the game.
The Bison went on to score six more runs in their final three at-bats to put the game away.
JDCC had 10 hits in the game. Oddly, those hits were divided among 10 different players. Gomez had two RBIs to go with his hit, while Gray, Kelley and Kenny McDonald all had one. David Washington, Clay Simpson, J.J. Cutler, Jake Bonds and Jeremy White all added a hit.
Starter Michael Maraldo suffered the loss, as he allowed three runs and six hits in five and two-thirds innings.
The Warhawks, who played at Okaloosa-Walton Tuesday, are off until Monday when they host Parkland, Ill. for a 1 p.m. doubleheader.
Game one
So. Union 100 007 123 – 14 16 3
JDCC 002 001 002 - 5 10 6
Game two
So. Union 100 001 0 - 2 5 3
JDCC 104 012 X - 8 12 1