St. Louis, Mo. – This afternoon the Columbia College baseball team was back in action when they traveled to St. Louis, Missouri, to play the final two games of a three game series against Harris-Stowe State (Mo.) University. The Cougars, who defeated the Hornets on Friday, split the doubleheader today as they were beaten in the first game by a final score of 5-4 and then bounced back to defeat Harris-Stowe 8-2 in the second game. With the split, Columbia College improves to 23-10 on the season.

In their first game against the Hornet, the Cougars were able to get on the board early as Blade McKee was able to reach on a walk and then later came around to score on a single from Kenny Piper to give Columbia an early 1-0 lead. Despite allowing Harris-Stowe to tie the game in the bottom of the first, the Cougars were able to add one run in both the third and fourth inning to take a 3-1 lead into the fifth. Columbia College ran into some trouble in the bottom half of the fifth inning as the Hornets were able to string four hits together and score three runs to take a 4-3 lead late in the game. The Cougars answered with a run in the top of the sixth to tie the game at four but ultimately a run from the Harris-Stowe in the bottom of the seventh proved to be the difference in the game. Jeremy Rettig was on the mound for Columbia this afternoon allowing just seven hits and three earned runs in 6.1 innings of work. Offensively, the Cougars were led by Kenny Piper who went 3-4 with an RBI.

In their second game against the Hornets, Columbia College got off to a slow start as they were held scoreless through the first four innings of the game. Harris-Stowe was able to take advantage of the lack of offense from the Cougars and were able to score one run in the first and one run in the fourth to take a 2-0 lead into the fifth inning. Columbia's bats finally came alive as the game progressed and the Cougars were able to score one run in the fifth, two runs in the eighth and four runs in the ninth to solidify their 13^th conference win of the season. Cody Ebert was the starting pitcher for Columbia as he allowed just six hits and one earned run in 7.1 innings of work. In addition, Blade McKee went 3-5 with two runs scored and Jordan Wright with 3-4 with two runs scored to round out the top performers for the Cougars.

Columbia College is back in action on Tuesday, April 4^th when they travel to Parkville, Missouri, to take on Park (Mo.) University in an AMC matchup. The game is set to start at 12 p.m.