Standish, ME - The Saint Joseph's College baseball team won a pair of games on Saturday evening, defeating Thomas College 7-5, and 14-4. With the two wins, the Monks improve their record to 18-2, and now stand at 2-0 in North Atlantic Conference play.

In game one, the Terriers jumped out to an early two-run lead. Tthe Monks cut the deficit in half in the bottom of the first before putting up a five-run second. The second inning rally was jump-started by a Dustin Spiller (Gorham, ME) double. After 3B Mark Clapp (Blue Hill, ME) and DH Chris Doughty (Westbrook, ME) walked junior 2B Brian Schools (Gorham, ME) drew an RBI bases-loaded walk to tie the game at two. The Monks used a pair of Thomas errors and a sacrifice fly by 1B Ben Grant-Roy (Biddeford, ME) to push their lead to 6-2. Doughty would provide an exclamation point by blasting his first homerun of the season in the third inning to finalize the scoring.

Senior captain Sam Tupper (Yarmouth, ME) earned the victory, pushing his record to 5-0 on the season. Tupper went 6.2 innings scattering 12 Thomas hits and struck out two. Tupper was lifted from a jam with two outs in the seventh inning, giving way to Cole Filosa (Milford, MA). After an infield hit to third base Filosa closed out the contest, earning his second save of the season.

In game two it was all Saint Joseph's as they pounded out nine hits and took eight free passes to whitewash the Terriers 14-4. Junior SS Luke Enman (Milan, NH) led the offensive charge with a 2-5 day, including 4 RBI. Mark Clapp completed his day with a 2-3, 3 RBI effort. FY LHP Andrew Keirstead was solid on the mound going 5 innings to earn the win. Keirstead (2-1-1) allowed 11 hits and struck out 2. JR David Doucette (Ipswich, MA) contributed a perfect sixth inning, including a sparkling play on a comebacker to the mound. JR Ryan Boucher (Manchester, NH) threw a scoreless seventh to close the book on Thomas.

"It is important to get off to a good start in conference play. I thought we swung the bats pretty well and our bullpen was excellent today," said Head Coach Will Sanborn. "It was a long day, after all of the work we did to get this field ready to play today. It is that much more rewarding to win these games."

The Monks will get right back at it tomorrow as they plan to play host to the University of Maine at Farmington. The North Atlantic Conference doubleheader is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. at beautiful, snow-free Larry Mahaney Diamond on the campus of Saint Joseph's College.