WAIPAHU, Hawai`i—Errors in the first game and a looming airline flight in the second were the deciding factors against Hawai`i Hilo on Sunday afternoon in their final baseball games of the year versus Hawai`i Pacific.
The Sharks won the first game 9-7, and the night game was deemed an 8-8 tie as the Vulcans had to leave Hans L'Orange Park to catch a flight back to the Big island. UH Hilo ends the 2017 campaign with a 8-31-1 record, while the Sharks finish 20-28-2. Both of Sunday's games were non-league contests.
The Vulcans out-hit their hosts in the first game, pounding out 12 hits to HPU's eight. But UHH also had five errors in the contest, contributing to six unearned runs.
UH Hilo led in the opener 4-1 after three and a half innings of play.
Jacob Grijalva and
Austin Forney had RBI-singles in the first inning and the visitors added two more runs in the second, helped in part by a pair of Shark miscues.
That lead was erased in the HPU fourth when the home team scored five times on just two hits. Three Vulcan errors aided the Shark cause, giving them a 6-4 lead that they would not relinquish. Hawai`i Pacific would add another counter in the sixth and two more in the seventh to hold off the Vulcans, who tried to rally back by scoring twice in the seventh on Grijalva's double and one more time in the eighth on a sacrifice fly by
Phillip Steering.
Trailing two in the ninth, the Vuls had two runners on base but a double play ended the game.
Forney had three hits in the loss, including a triple. Grijalva had two hits and drove in three runs, and
Kyle Yamada had a pair of hits.
In the second game, the Vulcans again took an early lead. They scored four times in the second inning, thanks to RBI hits by BJ Freitas and
Jonathan Segovia and a sacrifice fly by Yamada. But they would score only one more time on the day, in the seventh via a Grijalva sac fly.
Both teams had runners in scoring position in the eighth, but couldn't get the winning run home before the time limit deadline.
Cole Nagamine and Freitas both had two hits in their final collegiate game.
Steering, who came into the game with a PacWest and west region best .432 average, went 2-for-8 on the day. His season ends with a .421 average and a .537 on-base percentage, both tops in the PacWest.
