Sports

Lumberjacks swept in twin bill

Matthew Semisch

04/28/2015

For everything that Dakota College at Bottineau’s (DCB) baseball team did on Wednesday, Lake Region State did it better.

One week after the Lumberjacks swept LRSC 10-4 and 20-5 on the road in Devils Lake, the Royals returned the favor in another doubleheader on Wednesday at the Lumberyard. This time, the Royals outlasted DCB 10-9 in the first game of the latest twin bill before winning Wednesday’s nightcap by a 10-6 count.

LRSC now owns a 4-2 advantage in its eight-game season series with the Lumberjacks. DCB will travel to Devils Lake this Wednesday for another doubleheader with the Royals.

Speaking after last week’s latest twin bill with LRSC, DCB head coach Dano Fagerlund referred to the Jacks’ two most recent defeats as teachable moments for his squad.

“The guys kind of get down on that sort of thing and hang their heads when really you should just flush it and keep looking ahead,” he said. “We’ve been trying to preach that to them to just keep rolling, keep rolling, but they’re young and inexperienced, but you learn from it.”

Last Wednesday’s doubleheader marked the end of a stretch of 14 games for DCB in 11 days. The Jacks finished 2-12 in that span, with both wins coming at LRSC.

DCB (3-21) will play six games this week. After Wednesday’s doubleheader in Devils Lake, the Jacks will visit Minneapolis to face Dakota County (Minn.) in a pair of twin bils on Saturday and Sunday.

The Jacks will then hit Minneapolis again the following weekend for the NJCAA Region XIII tournament on May 8-10.

Fagerlund said he hopes that his team can quickly get back to the grind after a short break.

“We just need to give the guys a break here. We’ve had a lot of games over vey few days, so we’re just going to take it light, get the pitchers back healthy, so it’s more or less just getting rested, getting healthy,” he said. 

“You can lose out the rest of the regular season if that’s what it comes to, but while we want to do better than that, we also want to be ready for regionals, so we’ll take a break and then get back to work for the rest of the road.”