Batting Broncs’ hopes remain high

By Brian Pawelko

Starting off the season with an 0-3 record is not a beginning most teams feel optimistic about. For the Rider baseball team though, the outlook for the season is bright and the team feels it can make an impact in the MAAC conference.

The team lost a string of three close games over the course of the weekend to Liberty. In two of the three road games the team only lost to Liberty by one run, with one of those games going into extra innings. However, the Broncs were satisfied with their effort against Liberty and attribute the optimism to the mix of seniors and freshmen.

In the first of three, the team came out swinging, recording a very high 16 hits. For its first game, the team “came out and played strong,” said Senior Casey Kernan.

Seniors Bryan Wagner and Justin Squashic both recorded three hits in the season opener.
“I felt strong at the plate,” said Wagner.

Senior Mike Poalise reached the career milestone of 100 hits with two in the game.
The team’s pitching gave up nine hits on 11 runs, resulting in a loss by the final score of 11 - 10.

“We didn’t pitch well,” said head coach Barry Davis on the loss.

In the series’ middle game the Broncs made it close, scoring all their runs in the last two innings and bridging the gap to only a two-run disadvantage. Freshman Maurice Williams slugged three hits and collected 2 RBIs in the first game of his career at Rider. The Broncs once again fell short by a final of seven to five. Coach Davis attributed a lack of defense to the loss, but said the team pitched well.

In the series finale the Broncs once again made it close by sending the game into extra innings. Unlike the first two games of the series, the last game proved to be a pitchers’ duel. Sophomore Derek Caldwell recorded five strikeouts in the loss, while freshman Jamie Hayes whacked a solo home run to tie the score in the seventh inning. It wasn’t enough in the end, as the team fell 3-2 after 12 innings. The game saw better pitching with Davis pointing to the lack of hitting as the reason behind the loss.

“We pitched and played fairly good defense and didn’t hit,” said Davis.

Despite losing the first three games to start off the season, hopes remain high for the team.

“This is the best team we’ve had since I’ve been here,” said Poalise.

The Broncs team have a very balanced roster of both experienced veteran seniors and young talented freshman. Dan Saso, Mike Petrowski, and Jim Kennedy are among the team’s freshman pitchers.

The freshman class will help to fill in the holes after the Broncs lost two key players last season in Joe Moronese and Jonathan Rehm.

“We gained a little more in numbers and talent but lost some good experience,” said Davis.
The head coach felt the team needed to improve in the areas of pitching and defense, while coming up big with some big hitting.

Wagner added that the team needs to “improve and keep getting better overall.”

Both Davis and Kernan commented that the team got a feel for who can do what seeing some players in action off the practice diamond.

Davis also felt the team needs “to be more competitive early,” citing Rider’s tendency in the past seasons to come on strong towards the end of the game.

“We want to win as many games as we can win,” he said.Davis added the biggest goal would be to make the MAAC tournament.

The team plays at Longwood this Saturday and Sunday for a short two-game series.