BASEBALL

The Huntington baseball team squared off with Spring Arbor on Friday at Forest Glen with the Cougars besting their hosts 10-6 in game one before HU avenged the loss by way of a 4-3 win in the nightcap.

The Foresters scored in four of the first seven frames of the opener to be sitting on a 6-3 lead. Sam Kimmorley, Satchell Wilson and Jarett Gray pounded out RBI-singles while Langston Ginder and Kallen Kelsheimer each drove in a run with hard hit grounders to account for HU’s runs.

It looked like Frame and crew were on pace to ride out the win but a Forester error to kick off the eighth was a telltale sign of what was to come. The wheels came off after that as HU watched their lead painfully slip away.

Three straight singles followed by a grand slam tipped the scales in favor of Spring Arbor 8-6, but the guests weren’t quite finished. Three hits later including an RBI-double put SAU up 10-6 for a lead they would hold onto as a stunned Forester crew had no answer in their final two at bats.

Isaac Horton came in on relief in the dreadful eighth to be tagged with the loss after giving up six hits and five runs.

Huntington posted ten hits to SAU’s 12. Ian McCutcheon finished with three hits while Gray finished with a pair of base pokes including his run-scoring single in the fifth.

The Foresters returned the favor in the nightcap in come-from-behind fashion by plating a pair of runs in the sixth to turn their one-run deficit into a one-run advantage.

After the two teams traded two-run homers, HU’s by way of Gray’s bomb in the second and SAU’s at the bat of Landon Raczkowski in the fourth, the Cougars manufactured a third run in the fifth to climb on top at 3-2.

Just like game one, an error proved deadly but this time around it was the hosts who reaped the benefit of it. After Wilson singled his way on base and Gray made his way on board by drawing a walk, a missed catch at first allowed Wilson to dash home. A few batters later, Max Moser collected an RBI on a ground out for what proved the game-winner.

Wilson finished with three of Huntington’s eight hits. Freshman Jonathan Baker claimed the win on the hump, the first of his HU career, by tossing three innings of scoreless relief. He gave up just one hit and a walk while striking out two.

With this split, the Foresters move to 11-11 overall, 9-5 in league play, while the Cougars’ record now stands at 13-10-1 which includes a 7-7 CL record. The two squads were slated to play another doubleheader tomorrow, but those two games have been pushed to Monday at 3:00 p.m. because of inclement weather.