Cloud County Baseball Tops McCook Community College 6-1 to Earn Opening Day Win

Five pitchers combined to throw eight scoreless innings and Austin Coyle and Matthew Evans homered to lead the Cloud County Community College baseball team to a 6-1 home victory over McCook Community College on Sunday, February 2.
Freshman Joey Marino drove in two runs for the T-Birds, who will return to action less than 24 hours later for a pair of games against Kansas Wesleyan JV at Dean Evans Stadium in Salina on Monday, February 3.
Dalton Berg drove in the lone run for McCook, scoring Nathan Hutchinson on a single to right field in the top of the third. The single, nine-inning game marked the first meeting between the T-Birds and McCook since 2017.
Cloud County jumped in front with three runs in the first off Leif Friedrich. Coyle made it 1-0 on a leadoff home run to right field on the second pitch of the game. Marino later followed with a two-out double, scoring Nolan Freund and David Simmons.
Evans padded Cloud County's lead in the eighth with a two-out, three-run drive to right field, scoring Cam MaCleod and Gannon White.
Coyle, Freund, and Marino each tallied two hits on the afternoon, with Freund adding a double to left in the third. Returning outfielder Noah Konings reached base four times, collecting three base hits and a stolen base.
Sophomore Noah Bourgeois started the game for Cloud County. The right-hander from Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, allowed two hits with one strikeout in two innings of work.
Sophomore Caden Marcum pitched the next two innings, giving up one earned run on one hit with six strikeouts and two walks. McCook scored its lone run in the third on a two-out single by Berg, driving in Hutchinson who had reached on a one-out walk earlier in the inning.
Cloud County pitchers Jack MacIntosh, Myles Chamberlain, and Aaron Boutz followed Marcum with five scoreless innings.
The T-Birds will play two-games at Kansas Wesleyan JV on Monday, February 3. Cloud County swept the Coyotes in a twinbill in Concordia last year, winning 12-1 in five innings in game one and 10-0 in five innings in game two. First pitch of the first game of the double-header is scheduled for 1 pm from Dean Evans Stadium.