Saturday, May 21, 2016
By Chandler Ingle
The Goshen College baseball team used dominate pitching and 12 hit batsmen to defeat both San Marcos and La Conquista in their second and third contests in Nicaragua.
The first game of the twinbill resulted in a tough 4-3 win powered by starting pitcher, Travis Grimm. Grimm only allowed 4 hits in his 6 innings on the bump. Of the 4 hits Grimm allowed 2 doubles, but he held Masaya at bay with eleven strikeouts and only 2 walks. As Grimm’s pitch count continued to rise, head coach Alex Childers handed the ball off to Noah Shail to close it out. Shail allowed 1 hit and a walk and needed some help from right fielder Ike Lehman – who is not on the GC baseball active roster – as he showed off his hose by gunning down the tying run tagging from second to third. The Goshen bats were fairly quiet throughout as they only registered 6 hits, but drew 4 walks and 3 hit by pitches. Shail led the Leafs with 2 hits, including a double.
Part of the cross-cultural experience for the visitors was playing in a Nicaraguan small, rural community where the field had some rustic adaptations (the pitching mound used a wood block as the “rubber”) and is used both for other sports (right field had a soccer goal) and for grazing livestock (that had left some droppings on the infield).
In the second game of the day, pitcher Derrick Oley shut down La Conquista to give way to a 13-1 rout in favor of the Leafs. Oley pitched a complete game of 5 innings due to the game being cut short by way of mercy rule. The Leafs only needed 6 hits, but used a startling 9 hit by pitches to slide by the all-star squad of the La Conquista league. Oley was able to hold La Conquista to a single run by only walking 2 and striking out 2, both of which happened in the final inning. Ryan Hartig, Chandler Ingle, Brad Stotlzfus, Kris Plough, and Cody McCoy all registered at least one hit in the game.
The Leafs continue their trip in Nicaragua on Sunday in Santa Teresa before traveling to the capital, Managua, on Thursday to play a university team in the country’s national stadium.
