In a conference battle last Sunday afternoon in Washington, Pa., Point Park secured two wins against Glenville State, taking the victories with scores of 7-2 and 2-1.
Glenville State came out with the 1-0 lead in the top of the first inning until Point Park’s Isaac Santana batted it out to left field. This brought Jared Campbell to home plate for the 1-1 tie.
Glenville State’s Austin Carter scored a run at the top of the third to give his team the lead, but in the bottom of the third, the Point Park offense took control of the game. Chris Williams and Campbell each scored runs after Crixtian Taveras hit a double out toward right field, bringing the score to 3-2. Taveras then brought the score to 4-2 after stealing third base and running home following a Glenville State error.
Point Park extended its lead in the bottom of the fifth, with Campbell scoring his conference-leading ninth home run of the season.
“I knew he was gonna try and beat me with a breaking ball because that was the scouting report. He was gonna try to throw a lot of breaking balls at me,” Campbell said, “so I was kind of expecting it and just tried to put my best swing on it.”
Point Park would earn two more runs in the inning, with Luis Gonzalez batting in Taveras. Campbell would bat in the run for Joey Pilewski to make it a 7-2 Point Park lead.
Point Park’s starting pitcher, Brandon Clifford, would end up earning the win in this game, and Ethan Parker closed out the seventh inning to secure the Point Park victory.
While the pitching was strong for Point Park, it was the offense that was the main catalyst in the game one victory, specifically the scoring from Campbell and Taveras.
“Those are guys that are all-conference returning guys that have been in the program for a while,” coach Loren Torres said following the game. “We’re creating an identity, identity on how we’re gonna win, and those guys are the main piece of our identity.”
In addition to leading the Mountain East Conference in home runs, Campbell also leads in runs (29), batting average (.441), and is tied for the lead in RBIs (31).
The score was much tighter in game two. In the bottom of the first, similar to his teammate Taveras in game one, Williams stole third base and scored on a throwing error to make it a 1-0 Point Park lead.
In the bottom of the third, with Jared Campbell on second base, Isaac Santana hit a single out to right field to bring Campbell home for the 2-0 Point Park lead.
Glenville State finally got on the board in the top of the fourth. With three balls and two strikes, Carlos De Jesus batted the pitch out towards the fence in right field, giving teammate Zach Laurie the opportunity to score and cut the Point Park lead in half.
Glenville State’s defense remained strong for the remainder of the game, keeping Point Park at two runs, but Glenville couldn’t score themselves. Point Park took game two 2-1.
“Their pitcher, a lot of credit to him, he was throwing a sinker with some velocity that kept us off balance,” Torres said. “But pitching and defense, good old fashioned pitching and defense did it for us today. Orlando Leon had an outstanding outing and gave us an opportunity to win it.”
Leon, who pitched the whole game and credited the win to the work with his team, finished the game with three hits and seven strikeouts. He is 4-0 on the season.
The Pioneers maintain the first-place spot in the MEC North division with a 7-1 conference record and improve to 16-6 overall.
Point Park will travel to Charleston, W. Va., on Saturday for its next conference doubleheader against the University of Charleston, with games expected to start at 1 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.
