California Lutheran University Kingsmen Baseball played two games against Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). Over the course of Thursday, Mar. 10, and Friday, Mar. 11, the Kingsmen lost both games. The first game ended with the score of 4-2 and the second ended with a score of 3-1. The Kingsmen’s overall record is 12 wins and 4 losses in the season.

“They all came here to play, played hard, but the team over there just had a better day than we did,” Head Coach Marty Slimak said.

Junior infielder Zach Lafata said he felt the team could improve on hitting after going multiple innings without scoring hits or runs.

“I think we all need to get better at hitting, that’s for sure. We can’t let a team come out here, for two days and eighteen innings, and only get three runs. You’re not going to win ball games like that,” Lafata said.

Between the two games, Friday’s game was much closer and there were times where the game could go either way.

“Some of our players did a really good job today, but we had some really big situations where we could’ve opened it up, scored some runs or tied the game or something like that, and we just didn’t get it done today,” Slimak said.

During the second game, the Kingsmen had switched pitchers twice. Their third pitcher, first-year Will Watson came from playing shortstop. Several times in the last few innings, Watson stopped PLU from scoring anymore.

“It was pretty exciting for me to shut them down like that,” Watson said.

Not everyone had such a positive outlook though, as Lafata focused more so on improvements.

“We’ve had better games, but we just got to come out here tomorrow and get better. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, a lot of improvements that need to be made,” Lafata said.

Even taking the loss into account, the team kept a more positive outlook as they tried to focus on what they could’ve improved on.

“Everytime we had the chance to score, we didn’t get the big hit. And I think if we would’ve got some hits in those big situations, we could’ve turned this thing around,” Slimak said.

Watson also said a wish of his own as he looked back on the game.

“I wish it went the other way and we got the win, that our team would compete a little more, but I think our heart and our drive is going to be better throughout the season, so we’ll be going the right way,” Watson said.

Slimak also said his own hopes for future games.

“We’ll take the good and the not so good out of this game today, and we’ll work on those. We’ll try to improve on the good and we’ll definitely try to improve on the bad,” Slimak said.

Watson said that he would improve on himself and his team.

“I’d definitely improve on trying to be a team leader. Even though I am a freshman, I’d love to work and drive these guys a bit more. And I wanna work on myself as well, because I need to do the same thing,” Watson said.

All in all with the mixed feelings left behind by the team, Lafata reiterated multiple times that the Kingsmen were going to come back from this.

“We will be a different team by the end of this, that’s for sure,” Lafata said.

Moving forward, Coach Slimak said he was still proud of his team, just disappointed.

“I’m disappointed, I think they’re disappointed, but I’m still proud of them because we’ve still done some pretty good things this year and it’s still very, very early,” Slimak said.