Newport Finishes Week 0-3 After Loss to Sanford

After a promising beginning to the second week of the NECBL season, the tide turned as Newport recorded three straight losses. The Gulls headed up North and fell 5-4 to the Mainers in Saturday's contest. The loss bumped Newport to 3-5-1 and improved Sanford to 6-2. 

Jake Lenahan (Holy Cross) toed the rubber to start for Newport and on the other side, Charlie Hale. After two scoreless innings, the Gulls struck first off the bat of Ryan Novak (Miami OH). The lefty crushed a no-doubt, two-run shot over the right field wall, giving Newport the lead, 2-0. But this lead wouldn’t last for long, as Sanford scored one run in both the third and fourth innings to draw even at two. 

The Gulls recaptured the lead during the fifth, courtesy of another long ball. This time it was catcher Adam Broski (Michigan St.) mashing his first long ball of the season down the left field line. After dealing through the bottom half of the inning, Jake Lenahan’s day came to a close. The starter allowed just one earned run across five innings of work, raking up five strikeouts. 

Clinging to a one run lead, Newport navigated across back-to-back scoring frames, but the seventh inning was all Sanford. Brian Connolly worked his way aboard and stole both second and third. After scoring on a fielder's choice, the Mainers strung together base hit after base hit, scoring two more to lead 5-3. Parker Jennings (Oklahoma St.) entered out of the bullpen to keep it a two run ball game, but after a scoreless eighth, Newport was down to its final three outs. 

After the first two batters reached base, Cade Brown (Georgia Tech) drove in one to cut the deficit in half. With the tying run at first and one out, the Gulls pushed for extras but came up short. The next two batters were retired by Sanford closer Andrew Kapica, leaving Newport with its third consecutive loss to end the week.

Newport is off today but back in action at Cardines Field on Monday, June 15th. The Gulls take on the North Shore Navigators with first pitch set for 6:35pm.

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The Newport Gulls, members of the 13-team New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL), are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, founded as the Rhode Island Gulls in 1998 in Cranston, R.I., before moving to Newport in 2001. In addition to recruiting, fielding, and developing a team of the nation's top collegiate baseball athletes and attracting 50,000 fans annually to Cardines Field, the predominantly volunteer organization strives to benefit the community via summer camps, reading programs, fundraisers, scholarships, and charitable donations – totaling over $1 million since 2001. The Gulls are eight-time champions of the NECBL – the winningest franchise in league history – and were ranked as the overall No. 1 summer collegiate baseball team in the country by Perfect Game USA in 2012.

For more information about the Newport Gulls, visit facebook.com/newportgulls, follow the Gulls on Twitter @NewportGulls or visit www.newportgulls.com