GAMBIER, Ohio – The Kenyon baseball team earned a big sweep of Oberlin College on Saturday and kept its NCAC postseason chances alive by winning 12-6 and 2-1 at McCloskey Field. With the wins, the Lords improved to 13-14 and 7-6 in the North Coast Athletic Conference. Kenyon is currently fourth in the standings and needs to remain in the top four to advance to the league's tournament in two weeks.
 
GAME ONE
 
Through two innings on Saturday, the Yeomen and Lords had each scored six runs and combined for 14 hits. Oberlin started strong as Parker Goldstein and Brendan Mapes recorded doubles within the first three at-bats and gave the Yeomen a 1-0 lead. Later, Lawrence Hamilton and Derek Martin added RBI singles to push the score to 4-0.
 
Kenyon responded with three runs of its own as Alex Gow, Patrick O'Leary and Matt Contreras all had run-scoring knocks to bring the deficit down to one, 4-3.
 
Then in the second, Oberlin pushed ahead 6-3 as a ground-ball error allowed two to score. Again though, the Lords came back.
 
Gow, who committed that error, came back with a monster hit in the bottom of the second. Down by three, the freshman smoked a shot off the left-field fence and plated Matt von Roemer and Ryan Page.  O'Leary followed with a single to left center pushing across the tying run.
 
After that, Kenyon really picked up its performance on the mound and on defense. Starter Ross Scheinberg retired the next 13 Yeomen batters including three strikeouts, three groundouts and three flyouts.
 
In that span, the Lords went up for good. During the third frame, Kenyon plated three more runs including two sacrifice flies from Page and von Roemer. The Lords added single runs in the fourth, sixth and seventh innings as well. For Oberlin, it only put two runners in scoring position from the third through the ninth.
 
GAME TWO
 
The second contest turned into a great pitching duel between Oberlin's Sean Kiley and Kenyon's Patrick Craig. There was just one run scored until Kenyon went up 2-1 in the bottom of the seventh.
 
For Kiley, he tossed 6.2 innings, allowed four hits, no earned runs and fanned five. On the other side, Craig was rock-solid striking out a season-high seven batters while scattering six hits.
 
The only scoring through the first six innings came in the top of the third. Sam Harris reached second after an infield throwing error and was driven home by Goldstein.
 
Over the next three innings, the Lords got singles from Page, Contreras and von Roemer, which was the senior's 200^th career hit, but Kenyon could not bring them home.
 
Things finally changed for the home team in the seventh. After Alex Hoskins drew a two-out walk, Joaquin Murrieta singled up the middle putting runners on the corners. Then, Paul Siciliano's chopper to third base resulted in a fielding error pushing Hoskins across home plate. Mikey Arman followed with a clutch, two-out RBI as he drove a ball up the middle moving Murrieta across home.
 
With a 2-1 lead, the Lords turned to senior Jesse Bogacz to close the game. While Oberlin did put a total of three base runners on in the final two frames, Bogacz allowed nothing to come home as he struck out five batters and induced a groundout. It was his third career save.
 
Tomorrow, the Lords will travel to Hiram College for a single, 9-inning NCAC contest starting at 4 p.m.