On their way to a 12-1 record this season, the Little Rock Christian baseball team has done one thing better than everything else: Win games.
In Thursday's 8-3 nonconference victory over Joe T. Robinson (12-5) on their home field, the Warriors ripped a pair of home runs and got a shutdown performance from right-hander Jackson Kircher to win their 10th straight game.
"I thought we swung it a lot better,'' Little Rock Christian Coach Brandon Eller. "Robinson is a really good team. Obviously we threw our best arms against them today and I thought they did really good.
"Jackson Kircher absolutely was dominant when he came in. That's what he can do when he is in the zone. I thought the arms did really well and we swung it a lot better."
Robinson grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first without a hit. In fact, the Senators only made contact with three of Little Rock Christian starter Tate Collins' 29 pitches. Nathan Johnson walked, stole second and third. He then stole home, dodging Warriors catcher Carson Stoll by going outside the base line.
In the bottom of the second inning, the Warriors gained the lead. Collins crushed a home run to left field with two on, but he was called out for missing home plate.
In the third, after Cade Bowman reached on a wind-blown double, Kircher, Collins and Dominic Cicero had RBI singles. Stoll, who reached on a double, scored on a throwing error on his attempt to steal third. It was 6-1 after three innings.
In the fourth, Robinson added a two-run double by Brady Blackwell that chased freshman left-hander Jaxon Franklin.
Kircher, a hard-throwing right-hander who has committed to the University of Oklahoma, got out the fourth inning with a groundout to third on a nice play by Cole Davis. He struck out the side in the fifth and sixth innings and added two more strikeouts in the seventh.
Bowman added an RBI on a sacrifice fly in the fourth and Harrison Engskov crushed a homer to left field for the final run.
"We had some hits, two home runs and I feel like things went really well today,'' Eller said. "I mean Robinson is a really good team, so that was a good one for us to get."
The Warriors' most recent loss was a month ago, against Lonoke in their third game of the season to Lonoke.
"We talk about the season being a journey and how we want to play our best baseball in May, especially in the state tournament,'' Eller said. "So I think we still have room to improve. But at the end of the day, the stat that matters is win or loss, and we have been winning and we are finding ways to win when we play great and not so great."