Western Oregon Journal

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Western’s boys of summer continue to roll.

The Western baseball team hosted and swept a four-game set with Great Northwest Athletic Conference foe Northwest Nazarene University (16-25, 3-13) on April 29 and 30 to continue their trek toward a fifth straight conference title and an appearance in the NCAA DII West Region Finals. 

The Wolves, ranked third in the first official West Region poll released April 27, defeated NNU by the scores of 3-0, 11-2, 9-2 and 4-2, respectively. Wolves’ ace Nick Waechter threw 8.1 innings of three-hit, shutout baseball in game one of the series to notch his eighth win of the season. Senior pitchers Ryan Petersen and Brian Fadling, and junior Trent Kristjanson also had strong, starting performances on the mound for the series, all picking up Ws.

Senior second baseman Jordan Ramos, senior third baseman Mike McRae and junior first baseman Matt Skundrick all had stand-out performances with six hits, three RBI and one homerun apiece for the series. All helped fuel a balanced Wolves offense that got contributions from nearly everybody, including senior Jessy Tweit, who laced and legged out an RBI double late in game two, providing always-important insurance to the lead. Wolves hitters totaled 27 runs and 41 hits in the sweep.

With the four victories, the Wolves improved their all-time record against NNU to 61-13, and completed an eight-game season series sweep, dominating the Crusaders by a combined score of 84-18.

“We’re the better team and we proved it,” said Wolves senior catcher Greg McCarthy. “We did exactly what we needed to do against a team like Nazarene, and that was hammer them.”

McCarthy had another solid series with four hits and five RBI, but it was the fourth RBI that held all the meaning. McCarthy not only tied the score at one with a sacrifice fly in the Wolves’ half of the third inning of game four, but he also collected his 166th career RBI, breaking the school record for career RBI previously held by Bryce Gardinier. 

In the bottom of the fifth, McCarthy knocked in another run to make the score 4-1 while simultaneously adding his fifth RBI of the series and 48th of the season (tied for the team lead with McRae), and setting the career mark at 167 and counting.

“I’ve played in like 200 games here, so it’s about time I set a record,” McCarthy joked. “Seriously, it does feel good, and it’s a great [individual] accomplishment, but we still have a lot of work left to do [as a team], so we can keep our top-four ranking and get to Regionals.”

The work he refers to is the remaining eight games—and one suspended game that must be finished at Saint Martin’s May 13—all conference matchups and all pivotal despite now holding a 33-11 overall record and a commanding 14-1, first place record in the GNAC.

“Even one loss hurts our chances of getting to Regionals,” explained McCarthy. “We need to play with the attitude that we’re going to win out and just try to make things easy on ourselves.”

The Wolves will look to take that “win out” attitude into a four-game homestand with Central Washington—in which they’ll go for another season series sweep this Saturday and Sunday, May 7-8.

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