3/23/2026 Batesville, AR–The Westminster Blue Jays were on the road once again this past weekend with a three-game conference series against the Lyon College Fighting Scotties. Going into this series, the Jays were 3-0 in conference play.
Game 1: L 13-15
Recap: The Blue Jay bats took no time to get started;
Brett Montgomery and
Aden Pecka both drove in runs in the first to put the Jays up two. In the third inning, the offense kept its foot on the gas, scoring nine runs. A
Caleb Warren grand slam highlighted the incredible inning. Lyon would fight back, though, scoring six over the next two innings, a large part from a two-run homer of their own, cutting the lead to 12-6. The bats that scored nine runs in just one inning could only muster two runs the rest of the game, giving Lyon a sliver of hope. The Scotties took that hope and turned it into a massive eight-run eighth inning that carried them all the way to a 15-13 come-from-behind victory.
Game 2: L 9-11
Recap: In the second game of the doubleheader, the Blue Jays' bats started hot once again. The first three batters reached before Caleb Warren smacked his second homer of the day to give the Blue Jays an early 3-0 lead. Two more runs would score in the second from an error, and in the fifth, Troy Romero would hit his second home run of the season, bringing the Jays' run total to eight. Senior Derek Archer pitched five strong innings, only giving up two solo homers and an RBI single, before a blow-up five-run sixth inning that allowed Lyon to tie things up. Three more runs would score in the eighth against Freshman Aydn Barrett, and the Blue Jays were not able to fight back in the ninth, losing this one 9-11.
Game 3: L 1-11
Recap: For the third game in a row, the bats jumped out early for the Blue Jays. Troy Romero led off the game with his third home run of the year, his second to lead off a game. The hot start would not be indicative of how the rest of the game would go, however. On the pitching side,
Tayden Harlow would get the start, pitching two shutout innings, followed by
Colyn Wright pitching the next two, only giving up one. Lyon would score two in the fifth to give them the lead, and things would unravel from there. In another late-inning fiasco, the Blue Jays would give up eight runs in the sixth, ballooning the deficit to ten. The offense couldn't salvage any of the success that came from the first batter of the game and lost this game 1-11.
After a nearly perfect start to conference play, things took a sharp turn for the Blue Jays in this series. While Lyon is a strong team, projected fourth in the SLIAC, three spots higher than the Jays' previous matchup, Eureka, Westminster seemed to shoot themselves in the foot, allowing one big inning to turn each game on its head. Though the results of the series are deflating, take away the blowup innings, and the Blue Jays are looking at a conference win on the road against a strong conference opponent. Following this series, the Blue Jays will face Washington University on Tuesday, March 21st, in an out-of-conference matchup.
