Lancer’s Baseball looks to build off defeat

By Cody Rusan

The University of Windsor men’s baseball team, in advance of their regular season, played an exhibition game against the St. Clair Saints.

The Lancers jumped to an early lead, Oct. 4, backed by strong pitching and good defensive play. However, the Saints would not stand for defeat and battled to keep the game close. Ultimately, the Saints would win 4-3 in walk-off style with an RBI double in the bottom of the seventh.

Though this was only an exhibition for the two teams, the Lancers plan to build off of this defeat.

“We come out here in preparation for our league games and get everyone in, let them get their reps in,” said Lancers right fielder, Chris Rinaldi-Ross. “We’re in the gym three times in the morning and three times at night.”

The Lancers also saw doubleheader action against the University of Michigan Oct 1. The Lancers fought hard and split the day against Michigan.

“That was a big series to open up our season, it’s our first year in division one for NCBA,” said Lancer’s short-stop, Adam Pickel. “We’ve been going well for the past couple of years in division two. We’re trying not to change too much from there, we were very successful there. We went two years in a row to the World Series there.”

The University of Michigan finished their 2017 campaign with a 42-17 record. In the series against the Lancers, the Wolverines would take Game One with a lopsided result of 6-1. Game Two held more excitement and life from the Lancers group as they would take that game 8-6.

“Michigan is a very tough team to beat, as any American team, they have good pitching and good hitting,” said Rinaldi-Ross.

As the season gets underway for the Lancers baseball team, things are looking up. The team plays out of Amherstburg and will host Central Michigan University on Saturday, Nov. 4 for a double-header. The first game will be played at 12 p.m. and will be immediately followed by game two at 2 p.m.