ROLLA, Mo. - Missouri S&T's baseball team stepped outside of Great Lakes Valley Conference play for a midweek contest against 11th-ranked Missouri Southern Wednesday afternoon and fell to the Lions 14-5 at the S&T Ballpark.
 
Kyle Athmer (Albers, IL/Breese Central Community) got his first start of the season on the mound and pitched two scoreless innings before running into trouble in the third. After retiring the first hitter of the inning, Athmer walked three consecutive hitters to load the bases to bring about a pitching change. 
 
Jacob Cook (Shorewood, Ill./Minooka Community) took over, but hit the first batter he faced to force in a run. The Lions (20-7) would add four more runs in the innings, two scoring as the direct result of errors as the Lions would lead 5-0 by the end of the frame. The Miners prevented another run from scoring when Chase Burgess (Overland Park, KS/Blue Valley West) threw a runner out at the plate on a double steal attempt.  
 
In the fourth, Aaron Berkhoff (Colorado Springs, CO/Cheyenne Mountain) led off the inning with a single up the middle and Dakota Sill (Lansing, KS/Lansing) followed with a walk. Garrett Weiner (Alton, IL/Marquette) advanced the runners up 90 feet with a sacrifice bunt, then with two outs and the bases loaded, Missouri Southern starting pitcher Steen Lane threw a wild pitch that allowed Berkhoff to score to get S&T on the board.

The Lions, however, scored in each of the next three innings, scoring twice in the fifth, once in the sixth and three times in the seventh before the Miners kept the game going when Berkhoff belted a two-run homer to left center with two outs in the bottom of the seventh.

Missouri Southern scored twice in the top of the eighth, but S&T answered back with two in the bottom of the inning when reliever Jacob Davis hit the first two batters he faced in Logan Alexander (Olathe, KS/Olathe Northwest) and Cole Hampton (Edwardsville, IL/Edwardsville) and then walked Brady Voss (Lake St. Louis, MO/Liberty) to load the bases. With two outs, Burgess delivered a two-run RBI single to right to score Alexander and Hampton. The Lions closed the scoring in the ninth on an RBI double by Henry Kusiak.  

The teams combined for only 13 hits in the game -- Southern had seven to S&T's six -- as Berkhoff and Sill had two apiece for the Miners. Berkhoff and Burgess had all four runs batted in for S&T in the contest.  
 
On the mound, the Miners used eight different pitchers in the contest, allowing only seven hits and striking out four between them, but they also walked 10 hitters and hitting four batters along the way. 
 
The Miners will continue GLVC play by hosting Drury in a four-game series scheduled to begin Friday with a single game at 2 p.m. at the S&T Ballpark. 
 
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