Noah Grant/ Sports Reporter

St. Cloud State Baseball (21-28, 17-19 NSIC) closed out the 2026 season with a commanding 12-3 win

over UMary (34-16, 27-10 NSIC) on Senior Day. The Huskies scored five times in the first and never

looked back, hitting five home runs to close out the year with a win.

The Huskies turned to one of their longest tenured players, redshirt senior Cael Kolacia (Fort Dodge,

Iowa), to make the start on the mound. Kolacia induced a double play and recorded a strikeout in the first

inning to hold the Marauders off the board.

In the bottom of the first, redshirt junior Hayden Konkol was hit by a pitch to open the inning. Redshirt

senior Eric Bello followed with a laser over the left field wall for a two-run homer to open the scoring.

Junior Wilmis Castro then hit a long solo home run to center field, giving the Huskies back-to-back home

runs for the second time this season. The offense wasn’t done there, as redshirt senior Liam Moreno and

senior Wyatt Tweet followed with a single and a walk. Both runners moved up on a sacrifice bunt from

redshirt freshman Max Robinson and would score on a wild pitch and a passed ball to make the score 5-0

SCSU.

In the second, the Huskies would add on to their lead. With one out, Bello came up for his second at bat

and launched his second home run of the game, a solo shot to left-center field to make it 6-0.

UMary would get on the board and cut the lead in half in the top of the third. A walk, a hit-by-pitch, and

a single loaded the bases with just one out. A sacrifice fly from Bryce Leafgren and RBI singles from Hank

Griffin and Luke Rhee followed to drive home three Marauder runs.

It would take the Huskies one inning to get those three runs back. In the bottom of the fourth, Castro led

off with a double and moved to third on a Moreno single to right field. Tweet then lined a sharp single to

the left-center field gap to score Castro, and Moreno followed him home when the ball was misplayed in

the outfield. A walk and a hit-by-pitch loaded the bases with two outs, bringing up sophomore Austin

Baumhover. Baumhover was the second hit-by-pitch victim of the inning, earning an RBI and forcing in

Tweet to increase the Huskies lead to 9-3.

In the fifth, Konkol led off with a long drive to left field that cleared the wall for the fourth home run of the

day for SCSU, driving the Huskies into double digits and a 10-3 lead. That lead would stay until the

seventh, when Castro hit his second solo home run of the day with a blast out to center field.

The final Huskies run would score in the seventh, as Baumhover walked and moved around the bases on

a groundout and two wild pitches. Four Huskies pitchers – senior Eamonn Mulhern, senior Connor

Doolittle, redshirt junior Nolan Kahle, and redshirt freshman Conner Larson – combined to record the final

18 outs while holding UMary scoreless

Photo credit: SCSU Athletics