Westminster's Donahue throws no-hitter

GENOA -- After opening its season with five games in Southern Illinois, the Westminster Christian baseball team was greeted with wind, rain and 30-degree temperatures in its return.

But that didn't seem to faze the Warriors' Ryan Donahue. The senior battled through a steady downpour from the third inning on en route to a no-hitter in a 9-0 win at Genoa-Kingston on Thursday. The game was called in the top of the sixth due to rain.

"I was just trying to work fast to get the game in," said Donahue, who struck out five. "The defense was behind me. I didn't have to think too much up there and I was just focused on throwing strikes."

And if it wasn't for the change in field locations, the game would have been called in the third inning. G-K (0-2) and Westminster (3-3) played on the grass-less underclass field, which helped soak up a lot of the rain.

Oddly enough, the most trouble Donahue had all game came in the bottom of the first, before it started raining.

After getting the first G-K batter of the game to ground out, Donahue walked the second batter and followed that with two wild pitches before inducing an infield pop up and a strikeout to get out of the inning and leave the Cogs' runner stranded at third.

"He really worked hard out there today," said Warriors coach Jeff Moeller. "He struggled a little bit down south but he threw strikes and got ahead of guys today."

Westminster's offense scored all nine of its runs in the first three innings. Carter Ward got things rolling with a one-out triple over the left fielder's head and later scored on a Ben Palmer infield single.

Donahue helped out at the plate as well by hitting a bloop single to shallow center field, which scored Palmer from second to make it 2-0 after one inning.

In the top of the third is when it all fell apart for the Cogs.

G-K pitching walked two batters, hit another and threw four wild pitches to help Westminster score six runs and break the game wide open at 9-0. Four of the six runs in the inning came with two outs, something Moeller likes to see.

"It seems like that's become a characteristic of this team," Moeller said. "When we're down and out we come back; two strikes and two outs and suddenly we open up the inning."