Several of the McClave baseball players had little or no time to prepare for the upcoming baseball season.

    With a long basketball season due to their first appearance in the State Basketball Tournament in over 70 years, several members of this year's squad played their first game of the baseball season with three or less practices.

    Coach Casey Coulter and new assistant coach Allen Medina had a crew of about five players out over the past two weeks, but those were players not out for basketball.
    It was a reasonably successful start for the Cards, as they split

 with Holly, losing the first game 14-8, then coming back to bomb Holly in the second 14-4. Both games were five-inning contests.

    Holly jumped all over McClave pitching in the first game, as senior lefthander J.R. Miller, junior Dalton Sniff, and junior lefthander Blayze Melgoza gave up 15 hits through four innings of play.     Holly led 14-0 going into the top of the fifth, as they could not solve the dealings of senior Nolan Thompson from Holly.     Thompson held McClave to one hit through his four innings of work. McClave made it respectable when they scored eight times in the top of the fifth on seven hits against Holly reliever Michael Salgado.

    McClave batted around in the top of the fifth and got RBI producing hits from senior Gage Coen, juniors Mike Weber,  Darron
 Williams, and Ryan Geisinger.

    The second game was more to Coulter's liking, as the Cardinals started Geisinger on the mound. The hard-throwing junior was in total control in his three innings on the mound, as he grabbed his first win of the season.

    Geisinger only allowed one baserunner and faced just 10 batters in his three innings, while striking out six. Meanwhile, the Cards scored two in the top of the first. Weber's lead-off single, a walk, then a hit batsman loaded the bases for Darron Williams, and the junior came through with his fourth RBI of the day when he plated two with a sharp single past the second baseman.

    It stayed 2-0 until the top of the fourth, when McClave broke the game open with nine runs in the inning. McClave scored their first six runs of the inning on just two hits, one by Weber to lead things off and another by Coen on a two-RBI single.

    Freshman Jimmy Bencomo later had an RBI triple and Geisinger had another RBI with a double. McClave added three more in the fifth on Weber's third hit of the game and RBI single by senior Daniel Neuhold.

    Weber pitched the fourth and fifth innings, allowing four runs, while giving up five hits.

    "Not a bad start for us," said Coulter after the game. "It is going to take us some time to get things together with everyone coming out late."

    It will be a busy second week of the season for the Cards, as they play a single game in Wiley, then host both Walsh and Granada in doubleheaders.