by CORY WATSON
Sports Editor

Starting off with two losses probably isn’t the way Appalachian State University’s club baseball team was hoping to kick off their first season as a club.

But after losing games to the University of Pittsburgh and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the Mountaineers have powered back to win eight consecutive games in dominant fashion.

It’s a start that’s given the players reason to joke around and celebrate, an action any observer could have readily witnessed firsthand following this weekend’s series sweep at Jim and Bettie Smith Stadium over the visiting Middle Tennessee State University Blue Raiders.

Appalachian State University men’s club baseball player Ben Wilson pitches Sunday during a game against Middle Tennessee State University. The Mountaineers scored 50 runs in 15 innings of play over the weekend’s series against the Blue Raiders. Photo by Rachel Noel.

The Mountaineers dismantled the Blue Raiders in three games by scores of 20-0, 17-3, and 13-1.

The scoring got so out of hand for the Mountaineers that coaching became difficult.

“When you get a lead like that, it’s hard to still coach because you’ve got guys up there just swinging with a 10-run lead,” the team’s third base coach, Kristopher M. Kennedy, said about the day’s performance.

Kennedy, a senior building sciences major who has been with the team since its inception, didn’t seem to mind his coaching difficulties as games wore on.

“For the most part early in the game, we did everything we needed to do to get those leads,” he said. “We hit the ball well and it was just cruising after that.”

Junior management major R. Bryan Holbrook, club president, attributed his team’s success over the weekend and throughout the season to defense.

“Our defense has been playing really solid just about all spring,” Holbrook said of his team’s defense which gave up only four runs in three games over the weekend.

Holbrook acknowledged his team has played well in nearly every facet of the game, making winning a much easier luxury to come by.

“When you hit the ball well like we have, and the pitchers are throwing strikes for the most part and your team is playing really good defense, it’s kind of hard to lose,” Holbrook said.

Weapons on the mound like pitcher R. Charlie Thacker, junior building sciences major, have helped the Mountaineers to shut down their opponents with greater ease.

Thacker has pitched more innings than any other Mountaineer while still maintaining an ERA of 0, a feat difficult to obtain for any pitcher through any number of innings.

Thacker’s numbers helped him recently earn the title of Pitcher of the Week by the team’s governing league, the National Club Baseball Association.

In addition to playing well on the mound, Appalachian has proven lethal at the plate as well.

The team is batting a collective .393 throughout the course of the season and has managed to score 120 runs in their last eight games of play.

The Mountaineers have been led by players such as NCBA Player of the Week Hunter D. Glass, freshman accounting major, who batted .545 at the plate through six games of play prior to the MTSU series.

In this weekend’s series alone against the Blue Raiders, the Mountaineers put 50 runs on the board in only 15 innings of play.

After the weekend’s set of victories, the Mountaineers find themselves in solid position heading into the final stretch of the season.

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