Mside keeps pace on top half of league standings, splits weekend twin bills

A pair of impressive offensive rallies occurring over the later innings of two Great Plains Athletic Conference victories bookended a weekend split for Morningside College Friday and Saturday, March 26 and 27.

The Mustangs, improving to 13-17 overall and 5-3 in the league, tallied eight runs in the third and sixth innings to spark an 11-4 comeback win at Northwestern College's diamond in Orange City Friday. They repeated that formula in the nightcap at Mount Marty University's Bob Tereshinski Stadium at Riverside Park in Yankton, S.D., Saturday. Head coach Adam Boeve's squad registered single tallies in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth frames and added two more in the seventh for a 6-4 triumph over Dakota Wesleyan University.

Two run-scoring doubles off the bats of freshman infielder Wade Canaday (Marshalltown, Iowa) and sophomore outfielder Michael Boomgarden (Yuba City, Calif.) keyed the DWU decision. Canaday finished the nine-inning match-up with two hits and scored a run, joining junior infielder Carter Kratz (Vermillion, S.D.) and freshman outfielder Hunter Hope (Sioux City, Iowa), who also contributed two-hit outings. Those totals were enough to send the junior mound combination of Billy Mount (Burbank, S.D.) and Jordan Kyle (Lake Park, Iowa) to a positive outcome. They combined for nine strikeouts, with Mount garnering the win and Kyle taking the save.

In the opener at NWC the evening before, a slew of big flies turned the tables for the Maroon. Boomgarden, Hope, Kratz, Canaday, and senior infielder Jordan Pierce (Carlisle, Iowa) each hammered homers in a 13-hit attack. Freshman Caleb Thomson (Libertyville, Ill.) ran his pitching record to 5-2, fanning nine Red Raiders in six and two-thirds innings of work.

Northwestern and Dakota Wesleyan managed to snag victories both days by similar 5-2 scores, as Morningside wound up 2-2 on the weekend. The Mustangs are back in action Tuesday, March 30, traveling to Bellevue University for a single nine-inning game that begins at 4 p.m.

NOTES – The five bombs in game one at Orange City were the most in a game for the team since the 2018 squad did the same at the same venue in May that year … Thomson's nine strikeouts against Northwestern were a single-game personal career-best and marked the 26^th game this year in which the staff has compiled five-or-more strikeouts.