The Skyline men’s baseball team won 8-2 against Laney College on Saturday, Feb 22. Freshman starting pitcher Cole Sowyrda pitched a 4.1 inning with no hits, with a total 5 innings with 8 strikeouts, leading the team to a six-win streak and the fifth home win of this season.

“We’re not playing great, but we’re playing good enough,” said Dino Nomicos, head coach of Trojans Baseball. “The kids are playing hard. So we just have to play basic baseball. We had throw strikes and make all the places. So we did that.”

Going to the bottom of first, Trey Zanhursky, starting second baseman, hit a RBI singles, leading the team ahead by one. Sophomore catcher Matt Leong hit two RBI doubles with two outs, leading the Trojans to 3-0. As a total, in the first inning, the Trojans earned five runs with four hits, defeating Laney’s starting pitcher Grant Thomas, who pitched a 0.2 inning.

“Basically, he (Thomas) is a left-hander,” said head coach Nomicos concerning the batting strategy he sets for the team. “They’d like to throw the ball out a little bit. So we just had them stay back, and be patient, and sit on one pitch, because he wasn’t getting his breaking ball over. He became almost like batting practice — We just set on his fastball.”

As for the game-winning RBI by Matt Leong, Leong himself explained how important the hit was.

“I think it’s really huge to just come out of the gate and get the guys all pumped up and then just really carried over throughout the rest of the game,” he said.

In addition, Nomicos points out Leong’s double was clutch for winning the game.

“it’s important because any two out hit with runners in scoring position,” Nomicos said. “We haven’t done a good job in getting those runs in. We worked on it yesterday at practice, and he did a good job that was a big hit.”

On the top of third, Trojans short-stop Jack Mettam made a ground ball error with one out. Then, Sowyrda threw a hit by pitch to Justin Lenhart, a freshman designated hitter from Laney. Fortunately, with two runners on base, Sowyrda did succeed to retire the next two batters without losing score.

“I wasn’t too worried about the hit batter, because I had a little run support, and I knew that if I kept the pitch-by-pitch mentality, it would help me execute pitches better, stress-free,” said Sowyrda.

In the total of five innings pitched, Sowyrda only had Laney make two hits without bases on balls. When asked about his first victory of the season, Sowyrda explained the winning strategy he set for the game.

“My pitching strategy, as for facing my opponent, was beating them on the outer half of the plate, to create a lot of ground ball outs,” Sowyrda said. “As for my approach, I was working pitch-by-pitch, focusing on what I had to do for this pitch I was going to throw, and it helped me stay locked-in and get my job done.”

Since the beginning of the season, the team currently has received 11W-2L. Throughout February, the team has won eight games in this month.

Regarding this, Leong believes that trust is part of the winning element.

“I think just coming out and knowing that the only person that can beat us is ourselves, and just believing in one another, knowing that if we do something wrong, the next guy in the order on defense will pick us up, and I think that’s helped a lot,” he said.