Feb. 23, 2007

The Northeastern Junior College Baseball team came out swinging at Dodge City on Friday.

Bryan Shepherd's Plainsmen scored nine runs in the second inning on their way to a18-10 win over Dodge City Community College.

"It was exciting to see us come out with the intensity we had right out of the gate especially since we only been outside twice," Shepherd said.

When the Plainsmen hit three balls hard in the first inning, sophomore right fielder Langston Frison could see the writing on the wall.

"I was pretty confident after I saw those first three guys came up and hit those balls hard," Frison said. "I knew it was going to be a good day at the park. I felt like I was just waiting on my pitch, and I was confident I was going to do something with it. One of the biggest keys was we had a plan and we stuck to it. We didn't have any strikeouts in that game."

Frison wrapped out three hits including a double while seven other Plainsmen had multi-hit games.

The team blasted out 24 hits led by Las Vegas, Nev., freshmen Justin Matelka and Sam Feiner. Matelka and Feiner each turned in 4-for-6 performances in their college debuts.

Baton Rouge sophomore transfer Derek Townsend picked up his first win of the season. The 6-3 right hander cruised through four innings, giving up three runs on 5 hits.

It was a long road back to the mound for Townsend after spending a year and a half on the shelf recovering from an arm injury.

"It was emotional in the first inning," Townsend said. "After that first inning, everything went ok. It was a lot of hard work to get back. It felt good to finally see all the hard work pay off. I want to give a lot of credit to the team for coming out ready to play and putting runs on the board for me."

"Having gone through some arm trouble myself, it was emotional for me to see Derek get overcome his injury and come back the way he did," Shepherd said.

Sophomore Aaron Howe came on to relieve Townsend and surrendered just one earned run, and Sophomore Jesus Colon threw the last five outs to put Dodge away.