Oestrike Stadium? More like Logan Hugo’s (Essexville, Mich./Essexville Garber) playground.
The senior outfielder from Essexville, Michigan turned in one of the performances of the campaign in front of the Ypsilanti faithful on Saturday afternoon. Falling just a triple short of completing the cycle, while adding two home runs and six RBI’s to the statsheet in Eastern Michigan’s dominant victory over Miami, 19-12.
Things started off slowly for the Eagles, as coming off back to back losses in the previous day’s doubleheader, the green and white found themselves already down 3-0 once they stepped up to the plate to bat in the bottom of the opening inning.
However, a four run first inning and a nine run second inning quickly set the tone that Eastern Michigan would not accept being swept in their first full series at home.
“There’s events in your life—can’t determine what those events are, but you can determine your response, and ultimately that determines the outcome,” Eagles head coach Robbie Britt said about his team’s sizzling start to the game.
“So for us to respond again like we did last weekend in a game three situation—really a big deal,” Britt said.
Eastern Michigan held a 13-3 lead heading into the top of the third inning and did not look back the rest of the way - scoring six additional runs to reach their highest total of runs this season, and the most for the school in nearly two full calendar years.
While Hugo was the star of the show for the Eagles, Bruce Jellison (Hartland, Mich./Hartland/Wabash Valley) also had a big day going 4-5 at the plate with a double and two RBI’s, along with Brendan Kleiman (Olney, Md./Sherwood/Frederick C.C.), Ben Schecterman (Aurora, Ohio/Aurora/Ohio State), and Connor Walsh (Mattawan, Mich./Mattawan) all tallying multiple RBI’s on the day as well.
Fischer Hendershot (Flushing, Mich./Flint Powers) was credited with the win from the mound, his first of the season, and the Eagles as a whole moved to 10-10 (6-3 MAC) on the campaign; Miami falling to 12-11 (7-2 MAC).
Next up, Eastern Michigan travels down the road to Ann Arbor for a date with the Michigan Wolverines - the first of two pivotal matchups with the maize and blue over the next 15 days. First pitch is scheduled for 4 p.m., and viewers can listen to the game live on Eagle All-Access.
