OCC Baseball Team Bounces Back, Wins 3 After Doubleheader Loss

The Ocean County College baseball team heads into a doubleheader today at Burlington County Community College with its bats on fire.

The Vikings (8-2) dropped a doubleheader to Rowan College at Gloucester County on Saturday when they struggled to string together any cohesive offense. But on Sunday and Monday, the offense returned with a vengeance.

OCC defeated Union County College 14-1 and 18-4 on Sunday, then defeated Raritan Valley Community College 12-5 on Monday in Toms River.

Against Rowan, the Vikings kept the first game close until the sixth inning, when Rowan put up four runs en route to an 8-2 victory. In the second game, OCC was bitten by the error bug, with the Vikings committed four of them in an 11-2 loss on a cold day with wind chills in the low 20s caused by 18 mph winds, with gusts to 30 mph. Matt Dauskaus (Howell) and Brandon Bloodgood (Toms River East) took the losses.

Sunday, while still cold, wasn’t nearly as windy, and OCC responded. In the 14-1 victory, Chris Gehrsitz (Jackson Memorial) struck out five to improve to 4-0 with another complete game. Brick’s John Sullivan was 2-for-4 with a run scored and Karl Perez (from California) had three RBI in the game. In the second game, Joe Karagiannakis (Toms River North) was 3-for-4 with three RBI and Brian Pintinics (Brick Memorial) had a pair of RBI as the Vikings took advantage of errors. Union (2-6) committed 13 errors in the two games. Jordan Silvestri (Toms River North) struck out six over six innings of work to improve to 1-1, and Pat Meagher (Wall) closed out the game.

On Monday, OCC’s Corey Zytko (Brick Memorial) bounced back from a five-run outburst by Raritan Valley in the fourth inning to shut down the Golden Lions en route to his second win of the season. OCC, which won 12-5, had led 4-0 before the Lions’ burst, but scored two runs in the bottom of the fifth and tacked on another in the bottom of the sixth to make it 7-5, then added five more runs in the bottom of the eighth to secure the win. Brandon Bloodgood was 2-for-4 with a home run and 4 RBI, and Ryan Prout (Point Pleasant Boro) and Brian Pintinics each had a pair of RBI for OCC.