Junior Nate Webb’s 3 home runs power Baseball to 11-1 win over Oberlin

By Wes Mayberry

ADA — Junior Nate Webb (Bath, Ind./Union County) hit three home runs to lead the Ohio Northern baseball team to an 11-1 rout of Oberlin on Sunday afternoon at Wander Field.

The Polar Bears improve to 18-19 overall and have won five of their last six games, while the Yeomen fall to 7-25 on the season.

Webb's three home runs are one short of the program record for a single game, which was set by Billy Porterfield on May 15, 1993, when he hit four homers and a double in the OAC Tournament at Marietta.

Webb, who closed Sunday's game with five RBIs, got the scoring started with a two-run bomb over the fence in right-center field in the bottom of the first inning.

He and junior Jacob Wenning (Coldwater) added back-to-back solo shots in the third frame to hand ONU a 4-0 lead.

The Yeomen scored their lone run on an RBI single from Yianni Gardner in the top of the fourth.

The ONU offense responded in the bottom of the frame by loading the bases on consecutive singles from freshman Sam Harrison (Perrysburg/St. Francis de Sales), senior Sam Zeleznik (Hinckley/Highland) and freshman Sam Sells (Columbus/Olentangy Orange) with no outs.

Sophomore Logan Stevens (Plain City/Jonathan Alder) brought all three of those runners home with a double down the right-field line, and Webb later added an RBI groundout to increase Northern's lead to 8-1.

An RBI single from Harrison made it 9-1 in the fifth inning, and Webb added his third homer in the bottom of the sixth to make it 10-1.

Wenning capped the scoring with an RBI sacrifice fly that brought sophomore Dakota Durick (New Castle, Ind.) home in the eighth.

The Polar Bears finished the game having out-hit Oberlin by an 11-3 margin.

Sophomore Hayden Heche (Fort Wayne, Ind./Northrop) got the pitching start for the Polar Bears and improved to 3-1 on the season after allowing just the one run on three hits while walking none and striking out four.

Freshmen Vaughn Duncan (Springfield), Joe Tootle (Powell/Olentangy Liberty) and Brady Corbitt (Plain City/Jonathan Alder) and sophomore Kaidan Domer (Orrville) combined for five strikeouts while allowing no hits over three innings of relief pitching.

Northern returns to action on Wednesday at Defiance at 4 p.m. for its final non-conference game of the season.