Gaston College suffers rare doubleheader defeat on Saturday

A rare doubleheader sweep loss dropped Gaston College into third place of Region 10's Division I on Saturday after losing 7-6 and 10-5 at Spartanburg Methodist.

"I'm disappointed," Gaston College coach Shohn Doty said. "I thought we had a chance to make a statement this weekend. The statement that we made was not very good.
"We're going to come back tomorrow and try to get a split, which would make it a salvageable weekend for us."

The Rhinos, who complete the four-game series with a 1 p.m. Sunday doubleheader at Spartanburg Methodist, dropped to 30-5 overall and 7-3 in regional play after being swept by the Pioneers (21-13, 9-3).

Florence-Darlington Tech, ranked No. 7 in the current National Junior College Athletic Association poll, is 34-5 overall and 11-0 in region play and remains atop the Region 10 standings.

How rare was the doubleheader sweep loss for Gaston College?

It marks only the second time in 25 doubleheaders in the past two seasons the Rhinos have been swept - they've swept 18 of those 25 doubleheaders - and the first time they were swept came on April 27, 2022 at Cleveland Community College after the Rhinos had swept the 2022 Region 10 Division II Western regular season title.

Gaston College took early 2-0 and 3-1 leads in the opener before losing on a walkoff RBI double in the bottom of the seventh inning. In the nightcap, the Rhinos led 3-2 early before the Pioneers scored five runs in the bottom of the third to take the lead for good.

"It's just a rough day all the way around," said Doty, whose team is No. 11 in the current NJCAA poll and is ranked No. 7 in thejbb.net poll and No. 8 in the Dream Big Athletics poll. "Throughout the course of the day, we had some opportunities on offense that we didn't take advantage of. But I thought the offense did pretty well. At the end the day, we have to pitch it better. And we didn't do that today."

Six Gaston College pitchers yielded 22 hits and seven walks in 12 innings of work.

Offensively, Konni Durschlag (2 hits, double), Wade Kelly (2 hits), J.D. Yakubinis (2 hits, 2 home runs, 4 RBIs) and Clint Jordan (2 hits, 1 RBI) led Gaston College's offense.