With the series already won, Washburn baseball was looking for a sweep over Fort Hays State to kick off conference play Monday, Feb. 28.

It would be a tale of two games with the Ichabods leading by as many as 13 runs before ultimately coming away with a 14-9 victory.

“At the end of the day we came out and got a conference sweep,” said head coach Harley Douglas. “Our goal was to get a sweep and start conference on top so overall I thought we did a good job.”

The sweep moved Washburn to 11-4 on the season and 3-0 in MIAA play.

For the first time in the series, the Ichabods got a clean first three innings from its starting pitcher, sophomore Jack Brimacombe, in game three of the series.

Washburn provided Brimacombe from the start, with two runs in the first inning. The first coming from senior right fielder Parker Dunn on a single past second base.

After two more hits, sophomore Connor Scott sent a ball into center field for a sacrifice fly to score Dunn and put the Ichabods up 2-0.

Washburn picked up another run in the third inning, with another sacrifice fly into center field off the bat of Scott to score senior left fielder Zion Bowlin, who had doubled to lead off the inning.

The score stayed the same until the fifth inning, when the Ichabods put up their largest scoring inning of the season with 10 runs. Three came from senior designated hitter Quinn Waterbury, who cleared the bases with a double into left field, making it a 7-0 game.

“I have been facing righties all day and I am a big lefty, so I was expecting to actually get pulled from that game,” said a smiling Waterbury. “Coach talked about it after the game that if I had punched it wouldn’t have mattered … the next guy is going to do a job because everyone on this team can hit.”

Scott and junior first baseman Cale Savage each singled to pick up an RBI, and senior Brett Ingram added two more on one of his four hits in the game. After all the damage, the Ichabods led 13-0.

“Coach Crimmins challenged them quite a bit today with it and I thought we responded well and got back to hitting flat and driving baseballs and I thought that showed early on,” Douglas said.

At that point Washburn took out some of its starters and worked deep into the bullpen, throwing five different arms to close out the final four innings.

Two errors in the final three innings helped Fort Hays pull within as few as five runs. The seven earned runs by the Ichabod bullpen was the first sign of struggle for the unit all weekend.

“We got a little sloppy there but overall, you put 24 innings in of the 27 innings that we played and you are pretty happy with it,” Douglas said.

Freshman shortstop Teagan Tamiya added one run via a sacrifice fly in the eighth to provide more insurance. Finally, after one unearned run scored in the ninth, sophomore Julian Zamora retired the Tigers, striking out two to end the series.

“I think our standard needs to be a little higher and a little cleaner with what we do but early on it’s the conference and we got some new guys,” Douglas said. “I think it was an overall good weekend but now we got to focus in on Emporia tomorrow.”

The sweep moved the Ichabods win streak to four as they get set for a one game non-conference matchup with Emporia State Mar. 1.

Edited by: Glorianna Noland and Alyssa Storm