After a rigorous pre-season against strong opponents, the Dons were excited to get into league play.  First up on Tuesday was the defending champion College Park Falcons. Henry Souza (soph) took the mound for the Dons and kept the Falcons off the scoreboard in the 1^st inning.  Miles Bergman (sr) smashed a double down the 3^rd base line to open the hitting for the Dons, and 2 batters later scored on a Niko O’ Rourke (jr) sacrifice fly.

The 1-0 score stayed that way until the 5^th inning, as Henry Souza kept the Falcons off balance and off the scoreboard.  The Falcons were able to manufacture an unearned run off Souza in 5^th to tie the score at 1-1.  Meanwhile the Falcons starting pitcher gave way to one of their two D-1 commits who was throwing gas and mixing in his wicked curve ball.

Benjy Braunstein (sr) came in to relieve Souza in the 7^th inning and picked up where Henry left off, keeping the Falcons from crossing the plate.  When the Dons couldn’t capitalize on their base runners in the 7^th, the game went into extra innings.

Braunstein shut them down in the top of the 8^th and Miles Bergman drew a walk to lead off the bottom of the 8^th.  Will Berrien (sr) replaced Bergman at first after a hard force out, and Niko O’ Rourke stepped to the plate with the score still tied 1-1 with 1 out…

Niko hit a high chopper to 3^rd and the Falcons 3^rd baseman had to hurry his throw and threw the ball over the 1^st baseman’s head.  An alert Berrien took off for 3^rd and slid in safe before the wild throw from the 1^st baseman reached 3^rd.  O’ Rourke then took off for 2^nd and when the Falcons threw down to 2^nd O’ Rourke put on the breaks and got himself into a pickle.  It was a standoff as the Falcons tried to get O’Rourke out while being mindful that the winning run was on 3^rd.  After several throws back and forth, O’Rourke won the dual on another errant throw by the Falcons, and Berrien galloped home from 3^rd for the walk-off winning run.  What a great win and start to the DAL season for the Dons.

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Kyle White the led the Dons hitters going 3-3 with a 2B

Next up is College Park (away) again on Thursday at 4pm.  This time the Dons will likely square off against their other D-1 (UCLA) recruit.