The Carthage College baseball team (17-6, 8-4 College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin) won the rubber game of the three-game set with CCIW-opponent Elmhurst College (8-16, 3-9 CCIW), 9-5, on Sunday, April 12 at Butterfield Park in Elmhurst, Ill. The Red Men split a Saturday, April 11 doubleheader at Augie Schmidt Field in Kenosha, Wis. Carthage, which had lost three league games in a row, won the opener, 11-7, before losing the nightcap by an 8-1 margin.
Elmhurst took a 1-0 lead in the second inning on an RBI-single by Reagan McReynolds. An RBI-grounder off the bat of Zach Tsiodras in the third made it 2-0. The Bluejays made it a 3-0 lead in the fourth on an RBI-single by A.J. Compton. Back-to-back home runs in the sixth by the Red Men's Jared Helmich and Graham Wick, the former a two-run shot, tied the game at 3-3. Carthage broke the tie with a three-run eighth inning. Drew Bailey led off the inning with a solo home run, and Graham Wick hit a two-run single. Elmhurst scored two in the eighth to narrow the gap to 6-5, but Matt Rave's two-out, three-run double in the top of the ninth upped the Red Men's lead to 9-5.
Jared Helmich (Jr., Lake Villa, Ill./Fox Lake-Grant Community, 3-1) was the winning pitcher and allowed five runs, four earned, on eight hits and walk over eight innings, while striking out 11 batters. Luke Mentkowski worked the ninth. Ben Modesitt (1-1), the second-of-three Bluejay hurlers. Helmich also went three-for-four at the plate. Graham Wick and Matt Rave both went two-for-five with three RBI each.
"We broke open the first game on Saturday late," said Carthage coach Augie Schmidt IV, "but we went into a coma the second game and couldn't get anything done. Maybe that was a credit to their pitcher. Today, Jared Helmich put the team on his back. We've been looking for some leadership. All of the sudden, the game turned, and he started pitching great. I let swing on a 3-0 pitch, and he hits a home run. We were dead today, but his mentality just lifted us. He decided that a loss today just wasn't going to happen. He did it on the mound and at the plate, and everybody just fell into line. We have to keep winning series like this one and hang in there."
Carthage plays host to Rockford University on Tuesday, April 14 in a 3 p.m. game at Augie Schmidt Field in Kenosha, Wis.