MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.\u00a0 (VCSU<\/a>) \u00a0 \u2013 The Valley City State baseball team lost a marathon season opener Friday at U.S. Bank Stadium, losing 5-4 in 13 innings against Midland University.<\/p>\n Midland loaded the bases with a hit batter and two walks in the top of the 13th inning, and then took a 5-4 lead with a two-out wild pitch. The Vikings were unable to answer in the bottom of the 13th, ending the game after 3 hours and 47 minutes.<\/p>\n Friday’s game was the spring opener for VCSU, which now has a 4-8 overall record. (The Vikings played 11 games in the fall.) Midland University improves to 6-10 overall.<\/p>\n The Vikings and Warriors were scheduled to play a doubleheader Friday, but the 13-inning game took so long that there was not enough time to complete game two. The teams were limited to a 5-hour time slot at the stadium. Midland held a 1-0 lead after three and a half innings in game two before it was suspended. The teams will resume that game Sunday morning when they play again.<\/p>\n Up next: <\/strong>The Vikings and Warriors will meet again in U.S. Bank Stadium early Sunday morning. First pitch is at 5 a.m. The teams will resume their suspended game from Friday, and then will attempt to finish two more games in their 5-hour time slot. All are scheduled for seven innings.<\/p>\n Midland 5, VCSU 4 (13 innings)<\/u><\/strong> The Vikings had a golden chance to put runs on the board in the bottom of the second inning but left the bases loaded. Jorun Hamre<\/a> led off the inning with a double, and David Demeter<\/a> and Drew Nixon<\/a> followed with singles to load the bases with one out. Midland pitcher Tyler Seebaum worked out of the jam though with two strikeouts to end the Viking threat.<\/p>\n After going down 2-0 in the fourth inning, the Vikings cut the deficit in half, pushing across a single run thanks to two errors by Midland. VCSU then took its first lead in the sixth inning. With two outs and runners on first and second, freshman Kyle Leapaldt<\/a> drilled a two-run double to center field, giving the Vikings a 3-2 lead.<\/p>\n Midland answered in the top half of the seventh inning, collecting a pair of hits when fly balls got lost in the roof of the stadium and then pushing across the tying run with an RBI groundout. The Vikings could not answer in the bottom of the seventh, sending the game to extra innings. Both teams put up single runs in the eighth inning to make it a 4-4 game after eight.<\/p>\n VCSU’s best chance to score late came in the 10th inning when David Demeter<\/a> led off with a double to left-center, but he was eventually stranded at third base. VCSU relief pitcher William Hlady<\/a> gave the Vikings 4 2\/3 strong innings out of the bullpen. He entered in the top of the eighth inning, pitched out of an inherited jam, and proceeded to shut down Midland for the next four innings. Hlady gave up just one hit and struck out three over 4 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n Reed Butz<\/a> took the loss for VCSU after coming on for the 13th inning. Marcus Niemann<\/a> started on the mound for VCSU, going 3 2\/3 innings and allowing five hits and two runs. Matthew Suda<\/a> pitched well in relief of Niemann, giving up just two hits and striking out two in 2 1\/3 scoreless innings. Tyler Kliniske<\/a> came on for the seventh inning and pitched into the eighth, allowing three hits and two runs.<\/p>\n Demeter collected three hits for VCSU, going 3-for-6 with a double. The Vikings totaled nine hits in the game. Six other Vikings had one hit each. Leapaldt drove in two runs with his double, and Drew Nixon<\/a> went 1-for-5 with a run and RBI. Alexandro Valenzuela<\/a> scored two runs as a courtesy runner for catcher Alejandro Gutierrez<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friday VCSU Baseball MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.\u00a0 (VCSU) \u00a0 \u2013 The Valley City State baseball team lost a marathon season opener Friday at U.S. Bank Stadium, losing 5-4 in 13 innings against Midland University. Midland loaded the bases with a hit batter and two walks in the top of the 13th inning, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":98366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193430"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193494,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193430\/revisions\/193494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/98366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMidland struck first with a single run in the top of the first inning. Darius Johnson led off the game by drawing a walk, and then later scored on Matt Abdelnour’s RBI double for a 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n