The Waynesburg University baseball team had its home openers Sunday, March 18, against La Roche College. Both games for the Yellow Jackets resulted in losses extending the baseball team’s losing streak to eight games.

“I don’t think that any coach likes to talk about losing streaks and I am one of them,” said head coach Mike Humiston. “As much as I like to win, and I know that our guys like to win, it would be easier to handle if we fought until the end. One of the cornerstones in our program is ‘to finish what we started’ and we haven’t finished what we started in the last eight games we have lost.”

The first game was a rough one for Waynesburg.

The team had only two hits, both from senior Tyler Godwin, and three errors in the 9-0 loss against La Roche. Sophomore Jonny Kutchman picked up the loss, he pitched 2 1/3 innings giving up six hits and five runs, four of those runs being earned.

“It’s the little things that get you beat,” said Humiston. “When we continue to give our opponents five or six outs in an inning then you are never going to win those games. If we continue to have more errors than we have hits then we’re not going to win many games.”

The scoring started off in the first inning for La Roche taking the lead 2-0. Then, in the second inning, La Roche added on two more runs, and then another run in the third inning making it 5-0. After that, there were a few scoreless innings, however in the sixth inning La Roche would make it 8-0. Then, to finish it off in the seventh inning, they scored one more run making the final score 9-0.

“La Roche is a good team that is one of the reasons why we play them year in and year out is because they are a good team,” said Humiston. “They have some votes to be in the top 25 in the nation. So, they got good athletes, they can pitch, they can swing the bat, they play good defense and so quite honestly, I thought it was embarrassing, the first game. I think that our players would echo that.”

The second game was much more competitive between La Roche and Waynesburg. La Roche still won 5-4 though. Waynesburg, at one point, had a 2-1 lead in the fourth inning. La Roche then made it 5-2 and Waynesburg tried to comeback and fell short losing 5-4.

“We put ourselves in a great position to win the game,” said Humiston. “Four of the runs they scored were earned out of the five and we had opportunities to score runs and to keep runs off the board and we didn’t do it.”

The Yellow Jackets now have four wins and eight losses in their season. The next games for the team is a double header March 24 at Thomas More.

“We can’t just say that conference is like a light switch, we just turn it on and all of a sudden, we are playing good baseball,” said Humiston. “We have a tough road ahead of us, but I think that we are going to be ok.”