The Hawks baseball team broke an 11-game losing streak after defeating the American River College Beavers in the first of a three-game series on Tuesday 16-11, but lost the second game of the series 14-8.
The team’s last victory came on March 5 at Sacramento City College against the Panthers during the first of a three-game series, winning 3-0. The Hawks lost the second game of the series 8-2 at home on March 7 and didn’t see the win column until April 2.
“When you get knocked down, you got to get back up,” Head Coach Don Mico said. “You can’t worry about what happened now, you got to just keep moving forward.”
Mico said the team has been battling injuries since the beginning of the season. The Hawks lost three of their six pitchers in their first league game against Modesto in January, where they took the victory 9-8.
“It’s been tough luck and we’ve had bad breaks,” Mico said. “Our group hasn’t been healthy, we’ve been hurt since the beginning of league.”
Mico said the “biggest hole” was losing sophomore pitcher Cameron Orr, who was a big part of their lineup in both pitching and hitting. Orr has a strained oblique, which prevented him from playing for a lot of the season.
In the Hawks first game against the Folsom Lake College Falcons on March 19, they maintained a 1-0 lead into the ninth inning until Folsom hit a sacrifice fly to tie the game, followed by a home run and three RBIs, according to the Hawks website.
Mico said he was ejected in the fifth inning of game two against Folsom due to a disagreement with the umpire about a Hawks player being hit by a pitch and having it ruled as batter’s interference.
“The kid ends up hitting a home run and we go up 1-0. Then we get to the ninth and we lose it. So, that was that,” Mico said.
Sophomore utility player Kevin Soohoo said he thought the team needed to focus on finishing games the rest of the season.
“We just got to be more competitive in competitive situations and we got to get all 27 outs,” Soohoo said. “You can get the lead, but if you don’t get all the outs you’re not going to win.”
Freshman infielder Dhillon Abeid said the team started off with a lot of momentum, but lost it throughout the season.
“I think we kind of just need to do some things that we hate right now to kind of harden our minds a little bit and go through adversity,” Abeid said. “Other than that, I think we’ll get there.”
The Hawks are 13-19 in the season and have eight games remaining with their next home game on Friday against ARC to close out their three-game series.