John Carroll University and Juniata College split doubleheader during 2010 Snowbird Classic

Punta Gorda, Florida: Clear skies over South Florida led to a great day for base­ball Sun­day as the Juni­ata Col­lege Eagles took on the John Car­roll Blue Streaks in a dou­ble header as part of the 2010 Snow­bird Clas­sic at South Regional Park in Punta Gorda, Florida.

Both clubs split the dou­ble header, with Juni­ata win­ning Game One, 8–1, and John Car­roll tak­ing Game Two, 4–1.

Game One saw Juni­ata Col­lege take a com­mand­ing lead early and never look back, strik­ing gold with all eight of its runs before John Car­roll scored a lone run in the sev­enth inning.

Thanks to great pitch­ing and defense, the game remained a score­less tie until the fifth inning. At that point, Juni­ata earned three runs aided by two errors by John Carroll.

Evan Pap­pas got things started in the fifth with a one out sin­gle, then advanced to sec­ond on a stolen base. Pap­pas later scored on an RBI sin­gle by Kyle Sax­man for the first run of the game. Andrew Kriss then drove home two runs on a line drive triple to right giv­ing the Eagles a 3–0 lead.

Juanita car­ried that momen­tum into the sixth, col­lect­ing five more runs in the inning. Johnny Mar­tinez led off the inning with a dou­ble to left field. Gregg Hoff­man fol­lowed with a sin­gle over sec­ond base into shal­low cen­ter to put run­ners on the cor­ners with no outs. Rus­sell Gray drove in the first run with a force out that scored Mar­tinez. Later, Sax­man hit in two more runs with a dou­ble to left, and this before the Eagles picked up two more runs to end the inning and increase its lead to 8–0.

John Car­roll picked up its only run in the bot­tom of the sev­enth inning when Aaron Miller hit one down the third base line that scored Tim O’Brien. Juanita ral­lied to end the inning, how­ever, and take the 8–1 win in the first game.

Juni­ata pitcher Tyler Clif­ford looked strong in the win, strik­ing out eight bat­ters and allow­ing only two hits in six innings of work.

Game Two began shortly after the first and ended with an oppo­site result, this as John Car­roll came away with a 4–1 win.

The Blue Streaks took con­trol of the game in the top of the third as Ryan Kon­sler led off the inning with a triple down the line into left field. Kon­sler then scored one bat­ter on an error to give the Blue Streaks a 1–0 lead.

Juni­ata scored its lone run in the bot­tom of the fourth inning to tie the game. Hoff­man deliv­ered a dou­ble down the line to put a run­ner on base, but did not stay there long as he was dri­ven home on an RBI sin­gle by Cole Walters.

The Blue Streaks took back the lead an inning later, how­ever, with Kon­sler lead­ing the charge again, this time with a dou­ble to left field. Mike Carbo and John Hast­ings then drew walks to load the bases. Tim O’Brien reached on an error, scor­ing Kon­sler and leav­ing the bases loaded. John Skomra fol­lowed by draw­ing a bases-loaded walk to push across Carbo and increase John Carrol’s lead to 3–1.

John Car­roll added an insur­ance run in the top of the sixth inning as Zach Moss scored on a wild pitch to give the Blue Streaks the 4–1 mar­gin of victory.

The Snow­bird Clas­sic con­tin­ues through the end of March, with Juni­ata fac­ing Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­sity on Sunday.

Saturday’s game, mean­while, was John Carroll’s final game of the clas­sic, with the team now head­ing to Wash­ing­ton, Penn­syl­va­nia for the Wash­ing­ton and Jef­fer­son Invitational.

For photos from the game, visit my John Carroll University/Juniata College photo gallery.