Playing its best baseball of the season, Carthage College (14-25, 7-11 College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin) swept a Saturday, May 7 doubleheader from No. 11 and CCIW-champion North Central College (29-10, 13-4), 9-1 and 6-4, at Zimmerman Stadium in Naperville, Ill. The twinbill ended the Firebirds' conference schedule, with Carthage not qualifying for the CCIW Baseball Tournament.
In the opening game, Carthage jumped on North Central starting pitcher Charlie Klemm for four runs in the top of the first inning. Klemm, reportedly battling a sore shoulder, surrendered a solo home run to
Austin Prybylinski, an RBI-double to
Jax Calverley, a sacrifice fly to
Matt Felber and an RBI-single to
P.T. Boeye. P.J Moser connected on a solo homer in the third to give the Firebirds a 5-0 lead. Carthage bumped its lead to 7-0 in the fourth on a two-run single by
Matt Felber.
The Cardinals got a run back in the bottom of the fourth on an RBI-single by Jared Wojcik. Carthage scored twice in the sixth to take a 9-1 lead, with Jax Calverely and
Kody Krekling each hitting RBI-singles.
Carthage starting pitcher
Bryce Schaum (3-2) pitched a masterful complete game, allowing just one run on four hits, a walk and six strikeouts. The loss went to Charlie Klemm (7-2), the first-of-five North Central pitchers. Klemm gave up five runs, four earned, on seven hits and a walk over the first three innings.
P.T. Boeye led Carthage's 14-hit attack by going three-for-five with an RBI.
Austin Prybylinski,
Colton Klein,
P.J. Moser,
Jax Calverley and
Matt Felber each had two hits, with Felber driving in three runs.
The Firebirds took a 1-0 lead in the first inning of the nightcap when
P.J. Moser singled in a run. Carthage upped its lead to 5-0 with a four-run third inning, scoring its runs on an RBI-single by
P.J. Moser, an RBI-double by
Jax Calverley and two-run single by
Matt Felber. The Cardinals got on the board in the third on a sacrifice fly by Dom Listi.
North Central loaded the bases with one out in the fourth off Carthage starting pitcher
Jake Hartman Jr., but reliever
Brandon Marquardt worked out trouble to end the threat. The Cardinals pulled to within a run, 5-4, with a three-run sixth. Justin Rios hit a two-run single and Jared Wojcik an RB-single in the inning.
Austin Prybylinski's solo homer in the seventh made it 6-4 Carthage, and that score held up.
The winning pitcher was
Brandon Marquardt (2-0), in relief of
Jake Hartman Jr. Marquardt worked two and a third innings and surrendered three runs on four hits.
Thomas Coffey blanked the Cardinals over the final two innings to earn his first save. Ryan Behling (4-3), the first-of-four Cardinal hurlers, took the loss. Carthage collected 13 hits, with
Colton Klein going three-for-five.
"North Central is the class of the conference," said Carthage coach
Augie Schmidt IV, "so it feels really good to win two games over them. We had a lot of reasons why this shouldn't have happened today, but we played hard. We've been saying that we're playing better baseball, but it took a long time to get to this point. Our freshmen pitchers were outstanding today, especially
Bryce Schaum. Schaum went nine innings against a great team. He's been flirting with being great. His breaking ball was terrific today, which set up his fastball.
Thomas Coffey, with limited innings pitched this year, did a great job of closing out the second game.
Carthage ends its season on Sunday, May with a Noon non-conference game against Ripon College (17-20) at Francis Field in Ripon, Wis. North Central concludes its regular-season schedule on Monday, May 9 with a home game against Illinois Wesleyan University before playing host to the May 11-14 CCIW Baseball Tournament. "Take away the three or four league games that we flat out gave away, and we'd be right in the hunt," said Schmidt.
"I am so excited about this freshman class," concluded Schmidt. "We played the last half of the year with freshmen all over the place. We felt like it was time to bring in a big class and kind of grow up together. Everyone is committed to this, and we knew there were going to be growing pains. I thought we could compete a little better, but this was a hard year to be so young, with so many fifth-year players in the league. We showed some fight at the end, and that's a good way to end any season."
