After securing a victory in their first home game of the year against VMI earlier this week, the Cavaliers welcomed Dartmouth to Disharoon Park for the beginning of a three-game series on Friday afternoon. Virginia (5-3, 0-0 ACC) have stuck to a rotation that has worked to varying degrees so far this season, again opting for senior right-handed pitcher Jay Woolfolk to take the mound in Friday’s matchup against the Big Green (0-3, 0-0 Ivy League). This time, the senior was utterly dominant in an 11-3 win.
Both sides were quiet early, as neither team put a runner on base in the first. Woolfolk truly established himself in the second inning, however, as he struck out the side to remain untouched through two.
With all of the discourse surrounding the early slumps of key hitters across the Cavaliers’ lineup, they surely did not seem phased by any of the negative noise. Sophomore outfielder Henry Ford, who had gotten off to a measly 8-for-28 start through the first seven games of the year, put together a tremendous three-hit performance. Ford tallied a single in the second, a double in the fifth and an RBI single in the sixth — plus a stolen base and two runs scored for good measure.
Junior outfielder Harrison Didawick, whose lack of extra-base hitting has been a source of significant blame for the offense’s recent lapse in production, showed the Cavalier crowd a thing or two as well. His productive groundout to the second baseman brought in Virginia’s first run of the ballgame in the bottom of the second inning.
Perhaps the defining moment of the contest came in the fourth inning, when a scorched line drive off the bat of Didawick just narrowly evaded the crest of the right field wall and the foul pole, called a homerun on the field and confirmed via video review. The blast gave the Cavaliers a 5-0 lead, effectively taking the wind out of the sails of a Dartmouth squad that had been making a valiant effort to stay within arm’s reach of the 10th-ranked team in the nation.
In the shadows of the offense’s boisterous day lurked Woolfolk. With every run scored, it became easier and easier to forget that he had still yet to give up a hit through the fourth inning, collecting seven strikeouts during that span.
He came out for the sixth inning, marking his longest appearance of the season thus far, and he left no doubt as to the result — as he struck out another two hitters and sat down the Big Green in order to end his day.
With the arrival of the seventh inning came some changes, with freshman infielder Jackson Sirois pinch-hitting for sophomore shortstop Eric Becker. The move proved fruitful, with Sirois launching his first homerun in a Virginia uniform, scoring junior infielder Luke Hanson to push the Cavaliers beyond the 10-run threshold for the first time this season.
Barring a strange course of events that saw Dartmouth’s sophomore infielder Ethan Brown hit an inside-the-park homerun, the Big Green went down without a sound. Graduate student Wes Arrington shutting the door in relief.
For Virginia, the game was much-needed proof that the offense could rise to the levels seen last season after beginning this year with challenging early excursions to Puerto Rico and Texas. The Cavaliers will look to make a clean sweep of this weekend’s games with freshman southpaw Tomas Valincius taking the bump Saturday afternoon and sophomore Bryson Moore getting the nod Sunday.
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