Seward County baseball began their second series of conference action on Thursday afternoon with the first two of a four-game series against the Cloud County T-Birds in Concordia where a lack of hits in game one resulted in a loss for the Saints, but a dominant showing at the plate in game two propelled them to a 14-4 win to even the series up at 1-1 returning home to Liberal.

It was a pitching battle through most of the first game of the day as Brian Luna Alvarez stepped on the mound and struck out three batters for Cloud County before the T-Birds put themselves on the board first as they scored off an SCCC error to move ahead 1-0 entering the fifth. A couple more hits from the Saints’ opponent grew Seward County’s deficit to 5-0 and although Cameron Cartwright was able to drive in Todd Baffa on a single to left field to get the Saints on the board, Seward County eventually fell in the first game of the series 5-1 to Cloud County.

Nathan Hopkins did not wait long in the second game to get the Saints on the board as he stole home on a wild pitch to put them ahead 1-0 over the T-Birds who answered back in the bottom of the inning with four runs of their own to take over the lead 4-1 after just one inning. Hopkins once again answered the call for Seward County in the second with a big swing that led to a two-run homer to cut their deficit to one before another three scores in the third gave SCCC the lead back at 6-4. Another Saints’ home run in the fifth by Trenton Rowan kept their offensive firepower alive while a single to right field by Mason Gilbert pushed their lead out further to 10-4 after five innings. Seward County began to capitalize on some errors from the T-Birds’ pitcher to make their way around the bases and wrapped up second game of the series 14-4 to head back to Liberal all tied up in the series 1-1.

The Saints come back home after putting themselves even in conference action with a 3-3 record in KJCCC play while putting themselves 15-14 overall on the 2024 season so far through mid-March. Seward County will continue their series with Cloud County as they play games three and four on Saturday with the first pitch of the day being thrown out at 1:00 PM.