O'Fallon, Mo 5/10/2024- The Westminster College baseball team competed in the SLIAC baseball tournament on Thursday and Friday. The Blue Jays would lose to the top-seeded Spalding University 18-6 in the semifinal game on Thursday. They would fall to the loser's bracket and took on the Greenville University Panthers in the 1st elimination game on Friday morning. Westminster would come out on top 11-6 and advance to the 2nd elimination game on Friday night. They would take on Webster University in the nightcap with the winner advancing to the championship game on Saturday against Spalding University.
The Blue Jays would jump out to a 6-0 lead after scoring 3 runs in the top of the 3rd inning and then 3 more in the top of the 5th. The Gorloks would cut the Blue Jays lead in half by scoring 3 runs in the bottom of the 5th inning. Westminster would add a run in the top of the 7th inning to go up 4 runs, 7-3. Webster would continue to chip away at the Westminster lead, scoring a run in the bottom of the 7th and then two runs in the bottom of the 8th inning to tie it 7-7.
Westminster would threaten in the top of the 9th inning after Chris Louie and Aden Pecka would reach with back-to-back singles to put runners on 1st and 2nd. Jason Pesold would lay down the sacrifice bunt to move both runners into scoring position with 1 out. Troy Romero would smoke a ball down the right side, but the Gorlok 1st baseman would make a great play that resulted in a line out. Payton Whitehead would get hit by a pitch to load the bases with 2 outs. Matt Lukins would ground out to third base to end the rally.
In the bottom half of the inning, the Blue Jays would walk the leadoff batter and hit the next batter to start the inning. Logan McCurley would come in out of the bullpen and retired the next three batters with a strikeout and back-to-back flyouts to get out of the inning and force extras. The Blue Jays would go down 1,2,3 in the top of the 10th inning.
In the bottom of the 10th, McCurley would walk the leadoff batter and would go down 2-0 to the next batter. The Blue Jays would go to Dawson Schuemann out of the bullpen. He would strike out of the 1st batter he faced for the first out after starting down in the count 2-0. He would then walk the next batter to put runners on 1st and 2nd with 1 out in the inning. Schuemann would get a fly ball to center field, but the ball would be dropped for an error to load the bases for the Gorloks. Westminster would get another fly out to right field for the 2nd out, but Webster would not try to tag and score to win the game. So, with the bases loaded and 2 outs, the Gorloks would lay down a bunt that nobody in the stadium was expecting to walk it off and win the game 8-7.
Webster advances to the championship game on Saturday against Spalding University. The Blue Jays finished 3rd in the SLIAC for the second season in a row. Congratulations to the baseball team on a great season and tournament run. Thank you to the 16 Blue Jays seniors for all the contributions they have made to the Blue Jays baseball program.
