McBride Field spent the winter covered in snow and ice, but now that it is spring, it’s time to hear the pounding of cleats and the sounds of baseball. The Simpson College Storm had a doubleheader against the St. Olaf Oles on Sunday to open up the home schedule.
The Storm struggled against the Oles in the first game as Trey Castile took the mound for Simpson, allowing one run in the first inning off a walk. Castile held the Oles scoreless in the second and third but left the game in the fourth inning after allowing two more runs. Dante Dolash took the mound and pitched through the sixth until Mitchell Roeder and Charley Mershon replaced him to finish the game. Simpson managed six total hits in game one off of St. Olaf starter Jacob Fickenscher, which came from the top four players in the lineup, Ian Baldwin, Drew Carlson, Nate Cagley and Will Carlock. Matthew Florence scored two hits, the only multi-hit game for the storm. The final score of game one was a 5-0 win for the Oles of St. Olaf.
Drew Carlson started game two fast, with a home run in the bottom of the first after pitcher Easton Dunwoody held the Oles scoreless. The Oles came back with a vengeance in the second, scoring three runs off of two bases-loaded singles. Simpson responded in the bottom half of the inning with two more runs of their own off of a fielder’s choice and a steal of home on a pickoff attempt at first. Simpson didn’t score again until the eighth inning; the same couldn’t be said for the Oles, who scored two runs in the fourth inning and three in the fifth. Dunwoody was pulled partway through the fourth, and Eli Feeken finished out the inning on the mound until being replaced in the fifth by Dylan Schlee.
As the later innings went on, both offenses cooled off as neither team scored until the bottom of the eighth when Simpson pushed across another run on a double by Trenton Kingrey. The Oles exploded in the top half of the ninth inning, putting up five runs on a sacrifice fly, a one-run single and a three-run triple. St. Olaf closed the game out, allowing just five hits and four runs on two errors.
Simpson showed promise for the rest of the season, with the offense putting up a performance in the top half of the game and Dylan Schlee going 2 2/3 innings pitched without allowing a hit, as well as a two-hit, two-run performance by Bryson Gibson.
The Storm head to Western Illinois on Wednesday, March 5, for a single game before returning to McBride field for a three-game series against The Augsburg Auggies with a doubleheader on Saturday, March 8, and the rubber match on Sunday, March 9.
