The baseball team lost to Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU) in a three-game Great American Conference (GAC) series last weekend, April 22-23, in Weatherford, Oklahoma.
Harding defeated SWOSU 6-2 on Friday, followed by a 10-3 and 9-3 doubleheader loss on Saturday. The Bisons stand at 22-25 overall and 13-17 in the GAC.
“You always hope going into a series against a good team that you can play well and pull out a win, but it just didn’t work out how we wanted it to this time,” head coach Patrick McGaha said.
Harding took the lead in game one after senior outfielder Zac Stewart hit a homerun in the top of the first inning, making the score 1-0, until SWOSU answered with a run and tied the game at the bottom of the first. Senior third baseman Noah Chandler sent sophomore outfielder Chris Taylor to score after hitting a double to give the Bisons a 2-1 lead.
In the third inning, Harding secured two more runs with scores from senior centerfielder Harrison Hunter and freshman infielder Blake Coward, making the score 4-1. SWOSU brought the game to 4-2 until senior infielder Alan Copeland scored on a double from Hunter in the fourth inning and a single up the middle in the eighth inning from Stewart, solidifying the score at 6-2.
“Winning the first game of a series against a good team is always a great feeling,” Taylor said. “We competed well the whole game, and the results showed. Our mentality has improved over the season, and the team has shown a lot of resilience through it.”
On Saturday in game two, SWOSU hit three homeruns in the first inning and stretched its lead to 7-0 after two more runs in the fourth. Harding got on the board in the sixth inning after sophomore infielder Zach Beasley scored on an RBI double from Chandler, but SWOSU answered with a two-run homerun taking a 10-1 lead. The Bisons scored two more runs in the bottom of the eighth, ending with a 10-3 loss.
In game three, SWOSU took the lead 3-0 with two runs in the first inning and another in the second until Harding closed in after two runs in the top of the third, making the score 3-2. SWOSU added three runs in the third and another in the fourth to stretch its lead to 7-2.
The Bisons scored in the sixth inning after sophomore infielder Grant Guest sent Stewart home on a double, but SWOSU added two more runs on a homerun in the sixth inning to close out the game 9-3.
“Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to the other guys,” senior pitcher Joshua Spears said. “They played really good baseball on Saturday, and that’s out of our control. I think we have been good all season about learning from losses and coming back stronger.”
According to McGaha, the team handles its losses well, but the losses remind the players to focus on the task ahead.
“We try to take it by one pitch at a time,” McGaha said. “We’ve played a lot better baseball the last three weeks, and I think it’s important to have the mental awareness of being able to let our frustrations and failures go and just focus on what we need to do now to be successful.”
