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Issue date: 3/31/06 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Brian Massa Catcher Will Becker, senior, looks to the ref for an answer. The Tigers played four games against Rhodes College (Tenn.) over the weekend and won three of those games after a week of double headers.

After a 24-hour weather delay, Trinity beat Mary Hardin-Baylor 11-3, briefly relieving the Tigers (21-7) of conference play.

The Trinity baseball team came within a game of a Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) sweep over Rhodes College (Tenn.) last weekend.

They started the four-game series last Friday with a 9-0 shutout.

On Saturday they swept the doubleheader, winning the first game by a score of 4-1, and, with the seven-run rule, the Tigers took the second game with a score of 14-3. However, the Tigers finished the weekend on Sunday with an 8-6 loss to the Lynx.

"I think part of it was a let down from having played so many games in so many days," said pitcher John Allen, senior. "It just came down to mentally not being quite as focused as we had been throughout the rest of the week."

This was the end of a long week for the Tigers. They played eight games in five days.

"The loss on Sunday was just a little bit of fatigue," said first baseman J.B. Sowyrda, senior. "We'd played a bunch of games and I think we were just at the end of our rope."

But Assistant Coach Ed Welling sees fatigue as something a little different.

"I don't think that fatigue was a factor; I think that fatigue is a mental state of mind, and we're talking about young men who are in great shape," Welling said.

Last week Welling said that it was time for the players to make a statement and really show what they were made of. With one loss in eight games, the coaching staff, as well as the national rankings, felt that the team made that statement in last week's run. The Tigers are now ranked 18 in the nation.

"I think they did respond, and not just by the record, but how they started to play the game," Welling said. "I think that our seniors responded in a huge way by not letting us give into fatigue or the complacency of rolling out eight days in a row. The seniors really stepped up and are really now putting our guys on their backs. The rest of the guys really feel that sense of urgency."

The Tigers finished their eight game stretch 7-1. The team has four weeks left in the regular season to continue making that statement.

"I'm proud of our guys, they put together a great run, and now we move forward," Welling said.

This weekend the Tigers will face Millsaps College (Miss.) on the road in SCAC play.

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