Mules baseball and softball teams enjoyed dominating season openers contests on their new home fields at Bicentennial Park (baseball) and the on-campus softball field.
Slam, Milestone Mark Baseball's Bicentennial Debut
The Muhlenberg baseball team opened Bicentennial Park, its new home field, with a thrilling 10-9 win against Penn State Berks.
It was the bicentennial win for head coach Tod Gross, who became the 10th coach in Muhlenberg athletic history to reach the 200-win mark in one sport.
The Mules’ cozy home played small in its first game, with each side hitting two home runs on a day when the wind was blowing out.
No home run was bigger, though, than the grand slam hit by sophomore Steven Dimovski in the seventh inning. After the Mules (3-7) loaded the bases with one out on two walks wrapped around a double by sophomore Mike Carcich, Dimovski (pictured above) jumped on the first pitch and hit a no-doubt home run, the first of his career, over the fence in right.
Dimovski’s slam, the fifth hit by Muhlenberg since the start of last season, extended a 6-5 lead to 10-5.
The Nittany Lions (2-8-1) came back with a two-run homer in the top of the eighth and threatened to further cut into the lead, but junior Frank Kern came on in relief to get out of the jam. He got help from junior catcher Spencer Hobson, who threw out a runner trying to advance on a pitch in the dirt, with Dimovski making a nice tag at third base.
Berks added two more runs in the ninth, but with the bases loaded and two outs, sophomore second baseman Thomas Rorick battled the wind and rain to catch a popup in shallow right field, nailing down the win and giving junior Charlie Siper his first career save.
Muhlenberg trailed by four runs before it ever came to bat, but halved the deficit in the bottom of the first when Hobson hit his first career home run. An RBI single by freshman Emmy Bulis and a sacrifice fly by sophomore Sean Habeeb gave the Mules their first lead, 5-4, in the fourth.
Habeeb added an RBI single in the sixth.
Sophomore Kieran Mulholland settled down after allowing four runs in the first to shut out the Nittany Lions in his final three innings. Sophomore Shane Ohl gave up a game-tying home run on the first pitch he threw, but retired nine of the next 11 hitters, striking out four, to earn his first win of the season.
Every batter in the Mules’ starting lineup recorded at least one hit. Dimovski reached base in all four of his plate appearances, adding a single and two hit-by-pitches to his home run, and scored all four times.
Softball Sweeps in Return to Campus
It was a doubleheader sweep 31 years in the making.
Playing on campus for the first time since 1995, the Muhlenberg softball team inaugurated its new home field with two wins against King’s.
The Mules rung up 24 hits in the two games, winning the opener, 9-1, and coming back to take the nightcap, 10-3. They have won nine in a row and are 12-2 through 14 games for the first time since 2014. No team in program has had a better record through 14 games.
The fifth inning was the big one for Muhlenberg in both games. The Mules led only 2-1 before breaking the game open with four in the fifth in Game 1, then erased what was once a 3-0 deficit with a six-run fifth in Game 2.
Freshman Kineta Bradley capped the four-run fifth in the opener with a two-run single, extending Muhlenberg’s lead to 6-1. In the sixth, junior Lillie Teague drove in a run with a single before freshman Sofia Gallahue ended the game with a two-run single.
Sophomore Hailey Godin had a huge game, going 3-for-4 with three runs scored, two RBI and a pair of stolen bases. Freshman Josie Hoffacker contributed two singles and scored two runs.
Sophomore Morgan Bobrowski struck out the side in the first inning and allowed four hits and no earned runs in her five-inning stint, improving to 5-0 on the season.
The Monarchs (5-9) jumped on top in the second game with three runs in the top of the third. Muhlenberg managed only one hit in the first three innings, but broke through when the first four batters of the fourth hit safely, including an RBI double by Teague and a run-scoring single by Gallahue.
The Mules still trailed 3-2 with two outs and two on in the fifth before erupting to plate six runs on five straight hits. After consecutive run-scoring singles by Teague, Gallahue, and senior Scooter Hulsen, senior Maddy Svenningsen brought in two more runs with a bloop double.
Junior Peri Kahn (pictured above) capped the uprising with an RBI single of her own, and Teague added a third-run scoring hit in the sixth.
Freshman Eden Clark earned the win with three sparkling innings of relief. Clark faced 10 batters over the final three innings, striking out six of them and allowing only one baserunner (on a walk). It’s the second time this season she has struck out at least six in a relief outing.
