March 4, 2008

On Wednesday night we had a record setting crowd during our first game at Klein Family Field under the new lights. Unfortunately, the game didn't go so well for us; Santa Clara's bats were hot that night and our pitchers struggled to cool them down. Practice on Thursday became a downer when senior Greg Murray made a diving catch in center field and rolled over his glove and broke his hand. The doctor said he'll be out for about four weeks while it heals. Our skid continued through Friday night with another frustrating loss. We couldn't seem to string hits together when we needed to and failed drive in our runners on base. Freshman, Thomas Berolzheimer had a great ninth inning on the mound though, striking out the side.

We had a real gut check after the game and decided we better toughen up to get out of our dry spell. On Saturday we had a great game going into the top of the sixth, but Washington's bats heated up and they capitalized on some of our mistakes putting up eight runs up on the board. We chipped away at their lead in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings, highlighted by a pinch hit three run blast to left field by Kurt Wideman. Even though we didn't win Saturday's contest, we felt good about gaining some momentum that would hopefully carry over to Sunday's game to salvage the series. The parents that attended the Saturday game had a BBQ themselves on the concourse of the stands in right field before the game and then fed all of us players afterwards. The food was great, but a win would have made it taste even better. It was good for all of the new parents to get to know the parents of the older players and for us players to meet them as well. Susie Hovey had the idea for the BBQ and Barbara St. Urbain did a great job coordinating it with the help of Jody and Dave Joines.

With the carryover of the second half of Saturday's game, Sunday put an end to our skid. We had a couple of great performances on the hill from freshman starter Corey Kohnke and freshman reliever Thomas Berolzheimer.

We backed up the pitching with our offense throwing an early jab in the first inning with two runs and a later blow in the fifth with four runs. It was great to finally shake hands after winning on our home turf. We're looking to keep our momentum rolling this week with home games tonight and tomorrow night against BYU and at home again this weekend against Gonzaga. It will be our first week of having to play five games and a big couple of games for Mike McKeever playing against former BYU teammates.