HILO, Hawai`i--It was already pretty well established that first-place Dixie State could hit, their .348 team batting average bearing testimony to that.

Turns out that they can pitch, too.

The Trailblazers maintained their edge on the rest of the field in the Pacific West Conference with a pair of wins over Hawai`i Hilo on Wednesday at Wong Stadium, 12-4 and 4-0. In the second game, Dixie's Mason Hilty took a one-hitter into the seventh and final inning before settling for a three-hit shutout.

Dixie State is now 35-10-1 on the season, and ranked 18th in the country. They are 24-7-1 in conference play. The Vulcans dropped their 11th straight and wrapped up the home portion of their schedule at 8-28 overall and 8-26 in the PacWest.

The Vulcans took the lead in the first game in their first at-bat, when Phillip Steering doubled and Cole Nagamine brought him home with a single. The Trailblazers answered back with two runs in the second against freshman starter Dylan Spain, but UHH countered in the bottom half of the inning on Luke Van-Artsen's RBI-single. 

Dixie State would then take the lead for good in the top of the third, scoring three runs on six hits. They would go on to score in six of the nine innings, pounding out 19 hits in the contest. UH Hilo would add a pair of the runs in the fifth, but would come up short on offense compared to the top hitting team in the conference. 

The Vulcans had 10 hits of their own, two each by Kyle Yamada, Steering and Nagamine. The trio also had a double each. Spain gamely went 5.1 innings, taking the loss. Bryce Feist had four hits for the Trailblazers, while former Kapolei High School standout and Arizona State transfer Trey Kamachi added three hits, as did Jerome Hill. 

While the first game took nearly three hours to complete, the second game zipped by in opposite fashion. While Hilty was dealing on one side of the scorecard, UH Hilo's Kamalu Kamoku was holding his own on the pitching mound as well. Pitching for the final time at home, the senior worked quickly through the first two frames before running into trouble in the third when two diving attempts in the outfield turned into a double for Miles Bice and a triple for Drew McLaughlin. The Trailblazers would get four total hits in the inning and three runs to take a 3-0 lead.

Kamoku would allow one more run on a pair of hits in the fourth, but would settle in the rest of the way. He went the distance, scattering eight hits, walking two and striking out two.

Meanwhile, Hilty allowed a single to Nagamine in the second inning and not another hit until Steering and Jacob Grijalva singled in the seventh and final frame. The senior ace walked just one batter and fanned seven to improve to 9-2 on the season. 

The Vulcans honored seven seniors after the game--Nagamine, Kamoku, Grijalva, Eric Vega, Aalona Amimoto, Michael Suguro, and Byron Freitas.

UH Hilo will wrap up their season in 10 days with a four-game series at Hawai`i Pacific in Honolulu on May 6-7.