By Charlie Commeret
The Grand Rapids Community College Raiders baseball team bounced back nicely during the first game of Sunday’s double header, following a 9-3 defeat. The Win all started with Freshman RHP Kyle O’Hearn’s complete game shutout in route to a 10-0 victory.
However, things didn’t go smoothly to begin as Alpena got two runners on base with no outs to start the first inning, but a pop out and a huge double play eventually got GRCC out of the inning with no runs allowed. The bottom of the second was where things started to heat up for the Raiders hitters. Sophomore J.T. Ten Eyck hit an opposite field gap shot to score Cannon Paul all the way from first base really got the bats going and they didn’t look back.
Ten Eyck followed that up with another big RBI single and overall finished 2-3 on the day with two RBI’s. To keep the big fourth inning going, third baseman Xavier Allen singled to left field, scoring Ten Eyck making it 6-0 at the end of the fourth.
GRCC added some insurance runs in the bottom of the fifth, in which Paul grounded out to second base, nonetheless scoring the run from third. Paul finished 1-3 with two RBI’s and did a great job of putting the ball in play with runners in scoring position to give them a chance to advance runners on base. Along with Joey Hysell hitting a double in the left-center gap to score runners on base, the Raiders entered the top of the sixth with an 8-0 lead.
All of the scoring was insurance after the second inning as O’Hearn just let up three hits (one after the first Inning) including three strikeouts to top off the sixth Inning shutout performance. The win gives O’Hearn a 2-2 record as a starting pitcher as GRCC moves to 9-2 in conference play.
