On Feb. 28-29, CWU Baseball hosted their first GNAC games of the 2020 season. Competing against the Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) Nighthawks, CWU came away with one win and three losses in the four-game series. CWU head coach Desi Storey said the outcomes weren’t exactly what the team had hoped for.

“There were some positives to take out of this weekend’s games. We had some games where we swung the bat pretty well,” Storey said. “Realistically, we had too many mistakes over the whole weekend and some crucial mistakes in crucial times that hurt us.”

Storey said the team needs to work on being more consistent. Storey also said having consistently good at-bats and being consistent on the mound is important and something the team needs to address moving forward, specifically next week. 

The first two games on Feb. 28 resulted in two CWU losses. The Wildcats fell 4-10 in the first game and 4-6 in the second. On Feb. 29, the Wildcats’ efforts resulted in a win for the first game with a final score of 10-9, then a loss in the second game of the day, 1-3. 

Junior infielder Jake Tilley said the team had a rough start this weekend and had some trouble putting things together. Tilley believes the adjustments that need to be made are minor and once the team figures those out, they will be on the right page moving forward. 

“Overall, our team is really close. We have each other’s backs and are good at standing up for each other,” Tilley said. “Something that we could improve on would be how to deal with failure. We haven’t coped with failure the best so we need to learn how to move on and take things one step at a time.” 

Junior outfielder Michael Copeland thought the team did a good job battling back and staying in the games. Copeland said the team did a great job of having each other’s backs throughout the weekend as well. 

“I think we keep our morale pretty high,” Copeland said. “I think we do a good job, when it gets down, picking each other back up to try and get things going again.” 

In the final game of the series Copeland had three at bats, one hit, and one strike out. Copeland currently has a .414 batting average, after this last series, with a total of 29 at bats as well as six runs scored and 12 total hits. Tilley currently has a .053 batting average with one hit in 19 at bats as well as four runs scored. 

As a team, the Wildcats had 19 runs, 33 hits and 17 RBIs. The team also had two home runs in the series. Defensively, CWU committed a total of four errors, two in game one and two in game four.

CWU will compete against the Western Oregon University Wolves March 7-8. CWU will then be on the road on March 13-14 to compete against the Montana State University Billings Yellowjackets.