The Harding baseball team split their doubleheader Tuesday afternoon against Henderson State University, giving the Bisons a 9-5 record overall.
Last weekend the team took two of three games in their Great American Conference opener against Southern Nazarene University. They scored 25 runs in the first game, opening the conference schedule with a bang.
“We traveled to SNU for our three-game conference series opener,” senior first baseman Matt Calhoun said. “We took two of three from them and would like to have swept them, but winning two of three puts us in a good position for this upcoming weekend against a hot team coming to our park.”
Calhoun, batting .357 with three homeruns and 14 RBIs this year, leads the team in all three categories with players who have played in 10 or more games this season.
Graduate assistant Alex Smith said Calhoun has been outstanding for them this year, just as they thought he would be. He said Calhoun hits third in the lineup, and they lean on him to produce in big RBI opportunities, which Smith said he has done so far this season.
Calhoun drove in two of the Bisons’ six runs in their win against HSU in the second game Tuesday. Sophomores Andrew Fiddler and Jacob Stripling pitched well, giving up only one run each in the series. Unfortunately, the Bisons could not get any runs across the plate during the game for Fiddler to get the win.
Smith said Fiddler and Stripling put up great performances for their team, but in the first game, they just could not capitalize on the opportunities they were given to score runs.
The Bisons are almost a third of the way through the season, sitting with a record above .500, but still have a long way to go until the season ends.
“The season is a process, and our team is trying to learn from past experiences so we only make a mistake once and then learn from it,” Calhoun said. “What separates great teams from good teams is their ability to capitalize on key moments in the game, and as a team we are getting better at winning the situational moments that, over the course of a season will make us tough to handle as a unit.”
The Bisons had Wednesday and Thursday off to prep before heading into their three game conference series this weekend.
“We just need to stick together and keep competing,” senior pitcher Bronson Smith said. “Everything else will take care of itself.”
Bronson Smith, who plans on pitching this weekend, said he just wants to get outs, and whether they’re the first three outs or the last three outs, he wants to set the tone and give his team a chance to win.
The Bisons start their three-game series against Southeastern Oklahoma State University this afternoon at Jerry Moore Field starting at 2 p.m. This will be Harding’s second conference series matchup of the year.
