NORWICH – Following the loss to Owego and a rainout of Fridays game against Johnson City, Norwich hosted a double header at home, facing The Oneonta Yellowjackets and The Windsor Black Knights.
Norwich would play two solid games of baseball, however would drop both games, losing to Oneonta 5-1, and Windsor 9-3.
Oneonta came to town first for the Tornado, and struggled to earn the runs early, only leading Norwich 1-0 heading into the fourth inning of play.
“We made some bad base-running mistakes, and we got caught steeling,” said Norwich head coach Rich Turnbull. “We had two guys on in the first inning and got doubled up, so that really killed our momentum.”
It was the fourth inning that Oneonta managed to tack on two additional runs, pulling the lead away from Norwich even greater.
Norwich would only manage four hits on the night in part to the solid pitching from Oneonta pitcher, Mikolaicyk, who pitched the entire game throwing out three strikeouts.
It was Norwich's Gabe Gojani who pitched the majority of the game, helping keep the game as close as possible.
“Gabe pitched well, especially on short rest,” said Turnbull.
Gojani threw out two strikeouts in the five and a third innings he pitched before he was relived by Nick Murphy for an inning and Dylan Mack for the final inning.
Norwich lone score came in the final inning, but it was too little too late for the Tornado.
It was Chris Jeffrey in the seventh inning who managed to connect with the ball to send Nick Murphy home for the score, drawing the game to 5-1.
“When we did get guys on we just couldn’t get anything going. We didn’t have a baserunner get to third base until the last inning, so they really shut us down,” said Turnbull.
Norwich would see Jeffrey go 0-3 with an RBI, Austin McCloskey go 2-3, Gabe Gojani go 1-3, Nick Murphy go 0-2 with a run scored, and Garrett Thornton go 1-2.
“We didn’t leave many guys on, but we really just didn’t have the big inning we needed,” said Turnbull.
Despite the loss, Norwich showed improvement from the last outing against the Yellowjackets, when they lost 11-1.
O: 0 1 0 2 0 2 0– 5
N: 0 0 0 0 0 0 1– 1
