While most lay on beaches, the Tufts baseball team played its way from Lynchburg, Virginia, through North Carolina and back to Virginia again, clashing with eight schools in ten games in its annual season-opening spring trip.
Tufts returned home Monday night with a 5-5 record that did not do justice to games the team played.
After dropping the season's opening two games, 13-9 to Lynchburg and 15-6 to Randolph-Macon, the Jumbos won their next three at Guilford, Methodist and Greensboro.
They dropped a 4-3 decision to N.C. Wesleyan, then finished the trip with wins in both ends of a doubleheader Saturday at Apprentice and successive one-run, extra-innings losses in a Sunday twin bill at ninth ranked Virginia Wesleyan.
"We could have played better, but we could have played worse," coach John Casey said. "We've still got some questions we've got to get answered, but we certainly have some sense of some guys now."
But while the Jumbos are far from thrilled by their .500 mark, three of the team's five losses came in one-run decisions, and two wins came by similar margins, speaking for the young team's ability.
"It's frustrating to be 5-5," senior co-captain Randy Newsom said. "I've got real mixed emotions because we could have done a lot better, but we did some things real well. We started to come together in the last eight games and play really good baseball."
"All those teams are either ranked [nationally] or top of their conference."
Newsom experienced early struggles in the season opener, surrendering six runs -- three earned -- in three innings against Lynchburg.
"I came out and set the worst tone ever by just choking in the first game," Newsom said.
But the workhorse bounced back with two stellar outings, carrying a no-hitter into the ninth with one out against Methodist before settling for a 2-1, two-hit complete game win.
In his next start, the second game of Saturday's Apprentice doubleheader, Newsom pitched his second straight complete game, a six-hit, one-run, seven-strikeout effort in another 2-1 Tufts win.
Junior righty Jeremy Davis (1-1, 11.25 ERA) also struggled early, allowing Randolph-Macon (7-15) to score six runs in the first inning on its way to a 15-6 win.
Davis rebounded with seven strong innings in his next start against Greensboro (two unearned runs, eight K's) but stumbled again in the first game against Virginia Wesleyan on Sunday.
Davis lasted just a third of an inning, allowing four runs on four hits and a walk before being pulled for senior Dave Frew.
Randolph-Macon, who are 7-15, "may be one of the worst teams we see all year," Newsom said. "That was just us not being ready. That game sparked something in us." Newsom pointed that the next day the team went out to beat Guilford 13-11.
Frew, who has bounced around the bullpen the last three seasons with a career 5.74 ERA and 2-2 record, came up big on the trip, posting a team-leading 2.20 ERA.
While he was victimized for six runs -- only two earned -- in four innings of relief against Lynchburg, picking up the loss, Frew was a hard-luck loser against Virginia Wesleyan.
He pitched 7.1 innings to follow Davis, giving up the game-winning run in the bottom of the eighth after holding Virginia Wesleyan to one run before that.
After the opening two losses, the Jumbos picked up their play, thanks in part to several strong offensive performances.
Senior co-captain, 3B Adam Kacamburas started the year on a tear, batting .455 (10-22) over the team's first five games. Sophomore RF Matt Clement leads all Jumbos with a .469 average, seven walks, a .595 on-base percentage and nine RBI, including knocking in a key run in the team's 2-1 win over Methodist. Senior infielder Nick Palange, who entered the season with a .235 average in limited playing time, has also started well, batting .391 with a homer in six games.
Kacamburas downplayed his own results, instead shifting praise to his teammates, who he said are the cause of his early on-base success.
"The guys in front of me just got on base and put me in a good position to hit the ball," Kacamburas said. "The pitchers had to just throw to me, there was no way to put me on the base paths, so I just got good pitches to hit."
Those young players include freshman righty Ben Simon (2-0, 3.86 ERA), who threw a 3-1 complete game win against Apprentice on Saturday.
Simon gave up six hits in seven innings of work, and also picked up the win in the Jumbos' 17-6 spanking of Guilford earlier in the week. Classmates 1B Bryan McDavitt, who leads all freshmen with a .344 batting average, outfielder Chris Decembrele (.300, 6 RBI) and SS/DH Kyle Backstrom (.316) have had strong starts both offensively and defensively.
"We're fairly happy with the younger guys, I think they've done some good things," Casey said. "But we shouldn't be necessarily having to rely on them as much as we are. We've got some guys we're just waiting on to see."
The team has several areas it is looking to strengthen. Control, according to Newsom, is the biggest issue the pitching staff faces. In five wins, Tufts' pitchers have allowed just nine walks. But in five losses, the Jumbos issued 19 free passes, including 11 in the Randolph-Macon loss.
"We need to make sure we don't walk anyone," Newsom said. "Getting ahead in counts is the big one for pitching. When we got ahead in counts this trip we pitched well."
Keeping focused the entire game, base running and defense were also problematic at times for the Jumbos, who committed 18 errors that led to 11 unearned runs.
"One of the things we to have to basically work on is just playing all 27 outs of the game," Kacamburas said.
But according to Casey, many of the difficulties experienced early on will settle down as the team gets more game experience during the season.
"We could have done some things better, but some of that was that we're playing teams that have played 25 games, and we're playing our fourth or fifth," Casey said. "Obviously if this is our finished product we're not going to be as good as we can be. We're just going to try to keep working hard and see what happens."
Tufts will look to bring improvements in these areas to the team's clash this afternoon at Mass Maritime, in what Newsom calls a must-win game.
"That's a team we need to beat," Newsom said. "We're going to run out a good lineup against them and whatever it is, we have to win that game because we have to get some momentum going into this weekend [against Wesleyan]."
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