Cole Bishop | Student Life

The Tin Can regularly features shows hosted by The Improv Shop, a group that trains improv comedians in St. Louis.

Inside of a small, unassuming bar on Locust Street, up a narrow staircase and through a large doorway lies the heart of St. Louis’ improvisational comedy scene.

The Improv Shop, located in the performance space above the Tin Can Tavern & Grille at 1909 Locust St., is working to build a healthy, thriving improv community in St. Louis. Since its inception in 2009, The Improv Shop has offered weekly classes to the public, structured in a five-level program, and hosts free comedy shows four nights each month.

“St. Louis, right now, is just mediocre enough to go either way…It’s either going to become a little bit cooler or a little bit lamer. It has to move in some direction, and I want it to be a place where you can really come here and really learn improv,” said Kevin McKernan, the founder of the Improv Shop. “Any city worth its salt should have a comedic voice. It just should.”

McKernan, a local high school English teacher and St. Louis native, moved to Chicago after graduating from Indiana University in 2005. After living, working and performing in Chicago for a few years, one of the country’s centers for improv comedy, he came back to St. Louis intent on eventually starting a theatre and school of his own.

“I just thought, ‘I love it so much that I want to bring the art somewhere where it’s not. Chicago improv is going to be fine without me,’” McKernan said. “There was no real scene that was doing full-on longform…and I’ve always [wanted] to bring longform improv to St. Louis.”

Cole Bishop | Student Life

Senior Randy Brachman of the improv group Swindlers.com performs at The Tin Can bar.

With some help from Rick Andrews, a 2009 Washington University graduate and former president of the improv group Suspicious of Whistlers, McKernan taught the first of his improv classes on campus at night.

In just two short years, The Improv Shop, and the improv scene it has generated, has grown at an astounding rate. What started out with one introductory class has become a full-fledged community: There are around 60 students currently enrolled in classes, and a show on Saturday night opened to a packed audience. The Improv Shop’s Longform Nights, held the first and third Thursday of every month, are now consistently full.

“I don’t know where everybody comes from…We haven’t done any major advertising, we haven’t paid for any advertising yet, we’ve just been working on word of mouth, and we’ve arrived at a point where we have a full house on these Thursday shows. It’s just by word of mouth and people seeing and enjoying the shows,” said Andy Sloey, McKernan’s business partner and a teacher at The Improv Shop. “It’s amazing and I think it’s a testament to improv as an art form.”

Sloey, another St. Louis native who performed and studied improv in Chicago, joined the shop in 2010. While St. Louis has a long history of improv comedy, dating back to Del Close’s work with the Compass Players (now The Second City) in the 1950s, it had essentially been absent in the city. In the last 10 years, improv was taking place in some form, but a strong community and a full longform education program were missing.

The Improv Shop teaches longform improv, which focuses on longer, often interrelated scenes rather than the shorter scenes and games popular in shortform.

“The one thing we wanted to do was different levels of a longform program, because that’s what we both have exposure to from taking classes in Chicago, and that’s what the city was lacking at this point,” Sloey said. “There was a group of people doing improv, but we really wanted to try and foster a really good improv community.”

One of McKernan’s preliminary steps in the creation of The Improv Shop was reaching out to the Wash. U. community, a strong tie that remains today. K.A.R.L., one of Wash. U.’s three improv groups, appealed to Student Union for funding in order to enroll several of its members in The Improv Shop’s program. A number of Wash. U. students not in improv groups are also enrolled.

“Wash. U. was always the Holy Grail to me…It’s that I knew what it was like to be a passionate college improviser and be super into it. I felt, to be honest, that St. Louis hadn’t done enough to reach out to [the improv groups]. Here you have these people that know it,” McKernan said. “That’s why my first move was to talk to Rick Andrews. A city gets its arts from its kids.”
The Improv Shop also has students from Saint Louis University, the University of Missouri–St. Louis and other colleges in the area.

Two members of K.A.R.L., seniors Randy Brachman and Jed Jackoway, began taking courses over the summer. On Monday, Sept. 19, Brachman, Jackoway and junior Mitch Eagles, a Suspicious of Whistlers member, performed as “Swindlers.com” at an Improv Shop show.

“We found out that [The Improv Shop] was essentially looking for walk-ins, people who had teams and wanted to play…and they [let us],” Brachman said. “It was fun, the audience was responding. I felt like everything I said or did just got tons and tons of laughs.”

Swindlers.com, as well as a number of other groups that have and will come out of the Improv Shop’s five-level program, are all a part of this community that McKernan and Sloey envisioned. Both feel, however, that there is still much room for the scene to grow and that they are far from finished.
The Improv Shop has been saving money to buy its own theater.

“The end goal is a sustainable theater space on our own that has a full bar, does improv seven nights a week [and] the people in the theatre that do shows are a family,” McKernan said. “I get more excited by the idea of it, really, than the comedy of it, at this point…it really is a community thing. The vision is in creating a real community that can sustain itself.”

Upcoming Women’s Soccer Games

Sept. 1
Season opener against Missouri Baptist University at Francis Field.

Sept. 17
The Bears host No. 7 Wheaton College, who defeated Wash. U. 2-0 last season.

Oct. 9
The Red and Green travel to Atlanta, Ga. to face No. 5 Emory University hoping to come home with a big UAA victory.

Oct. 23
The Bears face their third Top-10 team of the season when they travel to Dubuque, Iowa to face No. 8 Loras College.

Nov. 5
Wash. U. closes the season by traveling to face 20th-ranked and defending UAA Champion University of Chicago.

For the Washington University women’s soccer team, 2010 and 2011 could not be any different.

Last season, the Bears fielded just six returning starters en route to an 11-8-2 record, a fourth-place conference finish and a second-round NCAA tournament exit. The fourth-place conference finish broke the Bears’ streak of four consecutive conference titles.

All but one starter from that team have returned, and, with a more experienced lineup, the Bears are expecting a major turnaround in 2011.

“Obviously, it’s a huge flip from last year. Last year we had one senior and we struggled a little bit; all of us were stepping up into roles we weren’t used to,” senior forward Emma Brown said. “We came into this year and…everyone has just been so mature. It’s amazing to have so many different leaders in every position on and off the field, so it’s definitely a nice change.”

Among the 10 returning starters are four seniors and four juniors, but the entire team’s roster is dotted with upperclassmen.

“We think our veteran roster, with…17 juniors and seniors, will just make us a little bit smarter in our preparation each day. I think they know what’s expected of a player inside the locker room with us and inside the women’s soccer family, and we’re just trying to make sure that we prepare day by day,” head coach Jim Conlon said, “and if our juniors and seniors can lead us in the right direction, that will be helpful.”

Senior co-captains Brown and midfielder Lee Ann Felder will be major contributors to the Bears’ success. The two combined for nine goals and 25 points last season, both earning all-conference first team honors. Brown is tied for 10th in program history with 21 career goals.

“Emma Brown and Lee Ann Felder are going to be two [seniors] that we expect to lead us and set the tone for other players on the field from day-to-day habits to in-game management to making sure our team is doing the right thing at the right moments,” Conlon said.

Despite Brown and Felder’s efforts, the offense rarely came together last season. Wash. U. was held scoreless eight times in 2010, but in four of the Bears’ eight total losses, the team allowed just one goal. The team allowed more than two goals in just one game all season.

“If you look at a lot of those games, we had opportunities at various times to score goals or maybe prevent a goal. I think if we all do what’s asked, and we give to the game plan and what we’re trying to do, it will turn out well for us and the results might change,” Conlon said.

Junior goalkeeper Clara Jaques believes the Bears’ will have a much more potent attack this season.

“Offensively, I think we’re looking really strong this year,” she said. “All three [Wash. U.] goalies are feeling even more challenged in practice than in years passed, and we’re very confident in our scoring ability, so we’re excited to see that and display it against opponents.”

Jaques, who posted 0.71 goals against average in 21 games last season, is ready to have another big year. Despite needing knee surgery last March for a torn meniscus, Jaques says that she feels “great” and is prepared for the start of the season.

In the University Athletic Association Preseason Conference Coaches Poll, Wash. U. was picked to finish third, behind No. 5 Emory University and defending conference champion No. 20 University of Chicago.

While the team’s conference schedule is expected to be tough, its non-conference schedule includes matchups with four other teams ranked in the NSCAA Top-25 preseason poll. However, the team insists that it is approaching the schedule game-by-game.

“We’re not looking towards weeks or months from now; we’re looking at our first opponent, trying to go day by day in our growing process and get ready for Missouri Baptist,” Conlon said.

The Bears will open the 2011 season against Missouri Baptist University at home on Thursday and will travel to Bloomington, Ill., this weekend to face Calvin College and Whitworth University.

“[We need to] focus our excited energy into good soccer, the best soccer we can play, and play to our potential. If we can play to our potential, then we’re pretty confident in our chances against pretty much anyone,” Jaques said.

Kickoff against Missouri Baptist is at 7:30 p.m. on Francis Field.

Courtesy of Comedy Central

Comedian and “The Daily Show” correspondent John Oliver will visit campus to perform the annual campus comedy show.

“He was a name that had been thrown around for a while…We got our budget in the spring, and we were looking through our contacts, [thinking], ‘What kind of big name can we get for our budget range?’,” CPC Comedy Chair Evan Cory, a junior, said. “John Oliver really stuck out, and we try to put on a great show, so we went with him.”

According to Student Union president John Harrison York, the budget appeal, totaling $47,000, will be approved on Friday.

Oliver is best known for his work as a leading correspondent on “The Daily Show.” In 2008, he covered the Vice Presidential debate, which took place in the Wash. U. Athletic Complex, for the show.

“Our goal is always to bring the person who, we believe, will put on the best show and will have the biggest impact with the students,” senior and CPC President Morgan Loewith said. “We know that [John Oliver is] a big name, and we thought he would do a great job, and I think him coming to campus in 2008 definitely helped with our decision just because there was still that name recognition.”

Oliver, who has been with “The Daily Show” since 2006, also appears as Dr. Ian Duncan in NBC’s “Community” and hosts “John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show” on Comedy Central.

“A lot of the people on this campus are pretty big fans of ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Colbert Report’, so I think that they’ll really enjoy that [CPC is] getting this big name comedian,” junior Mitch Eagles said.

In recent years, CPC has brought Seth Meyers, Brian Regan and BJ Novak to the annual performance. Comedian, actor and rapper Donald Glover did stand-up in Graham Chapel last April, also put on by CPC.

“I’ve never seen [Oliver] do stand-up; I’ve seen him act, and he’s a very funny actor, but people tend to be very different character-wise in stand up,” senior Jed Jackoway said. “I was pretty surprised when Donald Glover came, because I had seen [his acting], but hadn’t seen him do stand-up, and it was totally different.”

The show, “CPC Presents … John Oliver,” is free to students and will take place in Edison Theater on Friday, Sept. 2 at 8 p.m. Stand-up comedian Mike Lawrence will open for Oliver.

Nathaniel Margolies | Student Life

Senior starting pitcher David Liebman fires home against Webster University on April 18. Liebman gave up four earned runs through 3.1 innings in the third game against the University of Chicago on Saturday, a 5-4 loss.

“They were a very good hitting team––one of the best that we’ve seen all year––and we just didn’t get any breaks. We kind of fell apart at the end of the first game, but we started to battle in the second and third games,” said senior Adam Merzel, the starting pitcher. “We just came up a little bit short. You have to put good teams away, and we didn’t do that.”

The Bears started the day with a crushing 17-3 loss in the first game. Though the Maroons led by just two after four innings, they broke the game open with 12 runs in the bottom of the fifth.

Merzel allowed 12 hits and seven earned runs in four innings of work, but he faced just two batters in the 12-run inning.

“I just have to give them a lot of credit because they hit every one of my mistakes,” Merzel said. “I didn’t get away with a lot of pitches, and they even hit some pitches that weren’t mistakes. If I threw a…pitch that was even remotely hittable, they got the bat on the ball.”

After two hits to start the fifth inning, junior Michael Fletcher was brought in for relief, but he struggled to get outs as well. The Bears faced 13 batters, and needed another pitcher, before recording the first out of the inning. They gave up eight hits and committed three errors to allow 12 runs in all.

“It was pretty unexpected. We came in and just got destroyed in the first game. We were expecting Chicago to be good, but not be that good,” senior Travis May said. “So I think [during] the next games [we were experiencing] kind of a little hangover from that first game.”

Sophomore Stephen Bonser, the starting pitcher in the second leg, fared no better. He pitched six innings and gave up seven earned runs and 13 hits in a 7-4 loss.

While Wash. U. was held scoreless until the top of the fourth, Chicago scored one run in each of the first two innings and pushed across three in the third on a two-run homer and an RBI triple.

“They have a team that’s [full of] sinkerballers and groundball pitchers…and that’s what they did to us all day,” May said. “Their pitchers were keeping balls low and getting us to just ground out one after the next.”

May knocked in the Bears’ first three runs of the game, on an RBI single in the fourth and a two-run double in the sixth, but the team could not come back from the initial 5-0 deficit.

The final game of the tripleheader was the closest, but Chicago still came out on top, defeating Wash. U. 5-4.

“Playing a triple-header is rough, and I hope we never have to do that again, but it’s tough being the team that’s lost the first two and you have to come out and play another one,” May said. “It was crazy conditions there: 25-mile-an-hour and 30-mile-an-hour winds going out to left field, and they just kept hitting pop flies that would go over the fence. Our pitchers were really frustrated; all our fielders were pretty frustrated, just sitting there and watching that when we weren’t capitalizing on it.”

Senior catcher Joe Noon’s bases-loaded groundout in the second inning gave the Bears their first lead of the day, but that lead would be short-lived. The Maroons tied the game 1-1 in the third and put up four runs on six hits an inning later.

Junior Brandon Rogalski and senior Matt Skinner hit back-to-back RBI doubles in the fifth, and senior Ben Ingell had an RBI single in the sixth, but the team would be held scoreless in the seventh to end the game.

Wash. U. (25-16, 3-3) will return home to take on Millikin University on Thursday. The first pitch is scheduled for 3 p.m. at Utz Stadium.

“We realize that we still have a legitimate shot to make the [playoffs], and if we take care of business like we know we can the last couple games of the year, we’re going to have a very respectable winning percentage and an admiral strength of schedule,” Merzel said. “The regional committee definitely respects playing good teams and beating good opponents, and we have done that.”

Josh Goldman | Student Life

Freshman Kyle Billig makes contact against Illinois College on March 22. Billig stole five bases this weekend against Principia College to move within one of tying the single-season team record of 29.

Freshman Kyle Billig had five steals as the Bears ran rampant against the Panthers. The team stole a season-high 15 bases in a 14-4 mercy-rule win.

“I’ve scouted [Principia] and kind of knew what to expect and I knew we were going to be able to take advantage of that matchup with our speed,” head coach Steve Duncan said. “There aren’t many catchers that we’ve played against that can shut our running game down; we’ve played against two or three that have, but for the most part, we know we can run on anybody.”

The Bears now have a total of 106 swipes this season with 10 games remaining on the schedule, and they have eclipsed the team’s previous single-season record of 93.

“We try to play aggressive in all aspects of the game. We try to be aggressive when we’re pitching, we try to be aggressive on the bases and we try to be aggressive at the plate,” Duncan said. “It is an attitude that we have, and we’ve been able to turn that attitude into a lot of runs. [Saturday’s game] was a great example of it, because we stole more bases than we have all year in any single game.”

Sophomore Taylor Berman took the mound, pitching a seven-inning complete game while giving up four runs, two of which were earned, and nine hits. Though he got the win, pushing his season record to 4-1, Berman struggled early.

Principia jumped ahead in the first inning on a two-RBI double, and then scored again on a throwing error. The Panthers managed four hits in the first, but were held to just five through the rest of the game.

“A big part of it was getting behind hitters and having to throw them good pitches that were easy to hit,” Berman said. “I figured it out; it was a mechanics thing for me, sort of a timing thing, but I struggled because I couldn’t get ahead of guys, which is something that has been happening over the last couple [games].”

The Bears got two back in the bottom of the first. After Billig was hit by a pitch to leadoff the inning, he stole both second and third base. Junior Brandon Rogalski then walked and stole second, and both runners scored on two wild pitches in consecutive at-bats.

“We watched [Principia’s starting pitcher] warming up in the bullpen and we were able to see that he was really slow from the stretch and he kind of tipped off when he was pitching home,” Billig said.

Wash. U. stole five bases in the first, and swiped another four in a two-run third inning. Senior Matt Bayer’s double with runners on second and third plated two runs and gave the Bears the lead.

Billig, whose 28 steals is one short of Wash. U.’s single-season record, attributed the team’s success on the basepaths to Duncan’s scouting. The Red and Green stole at least one base in five of seven innings.

“Every time we got a runner with speed on first, we knew that he could easily end up on second or even third,” Billig said. “Once we had runners in scoring position, it was just a matter of finding a way to get them in.”

When Berman slipped while fielding a ground ball, his throwing error led to an unearned run in the next inning.

In the fifth, the Bears jumped ahead on senior Travis May’s RBI-double before freshman Andrew Dwoskin’s three-run homer to left center broke open the game.

“Once [Andrew] Dwoskin hit that, it just kind of lit the fire underneath us,” Billig said. “We knew that we were capable of beating this team and putting up a lot of runs, so [the homerun] just kind of motivated us, got us going, and we were able to pull out the win”

Rogalski and senior catcher Joe Noon each tripled in the sixth, and the Red and Green tacked on six runs over the next two innings to force a mercy rule victory.

Earlier in the week, on Thursday, April 14, Wash. U. got a 5-4 victory over Webster University. The starting pitcher, sophomore Stephen Bonser, went nine innings and allowed just three runs, while Rogalski provided a game-winning two-RBI double in the seventh.

Wash. U. will play a doubleheader against the Gorloks Monday afternoon.

On Saturday, the University’s Department of Athletics will host a dedication celebration and baseball alumni reunion, renaming the complex Kelly Field at Irv Utz Stadium.

Utz served as the head baseball coach from 1954 until 1963, amassing an overall record of 162-66 (.711), and was inducted into the Washington University Sports Hall of Fame in 1992.

“We had an alumni baseball function about four or five years ago, and many of the players that had played for Irv Utz asked about the possibility of renaming the field,” Athletic Director John Schael said. “That’s where the idea took place, but it’s not like it hasn’t been thought about within the department of athletics as well.”

Schael will unveil a commemorative plaque honoring Utz on Saturday, officially renaming the complex, and there will be a welcome reception tonight for alumni spanning multiple eras of program history.

“We have about 150 former players coming back in honor of their former coach Irv Utz, as well as many players that played the game for Coach [Leo] Kelly (1969-81)….There will be some remarks that are made by former players in recognition of the experiences that they had with Coach Utz, and some of the memories,” Schael said. “What we want to do is honor both families.”

“We have two outstanding men who dedicated their lives to the service of the student athletes and we are recognizing both, honoring both, rightfully so. It’s a good feeling. We’ll have a new name, it’s a part of our history that will always be with us as we move forward.”

Though the complex is just now receiving Utz’s name, the baseball team once played on a field bearing his name.

“It was in 1981 when we had a baseball field named in honor of Irv Utz,” Schael said. “It was located at the site of Simon Hall…and in order to make room for the construction of the new school of business, the field was moved to a new location.

“With that move, we changed the name of the field to Kelly Field, named after a more current baseball coach, who had dedicated his life to the service of the student athletes and certainly one who provided positive leadership to all students.”

Schael said that along with the new name, the department plans to add a number of “enhancements” to the complex, including permanent seating, a new scoreboard and wind screens.

“When we take a look at all of our facilities…we always try to figure out ways to enhance their attractiveness to the students that participate, whether it be in recreation or [in] intercollegiate athletics,” Schael said, though he acknowledged that making these changes will take time.

This ceremony comes at a turning point for the program. Head coach Steve Duncan is in his first year with the Bears, and has set high expectations for his players and the program.

“[The dedication] wasn’t tied to Coach Duncan’s arrival, but it certainly binds the past with the present,” Schael said. “The former players…are going to have a chance to meet our new coach. They’ll be excited about the goals that he has and the direction that the program is going in. They’ll help us usher in this new era for Coach Duncan and the baseball Bears.”

Josh Goldman | Student Life

Senior Travis May hits against Illinois College on March 22. May knocked in both the game-tying and game-winning runs in Saturday's 8-7 win over Greenville College.

“We got down early in a bunch of games, and we basically did the same thing for four games in a row. I felt like we knew we were better than the teams that we were playing, and we just didn’t turn it on in the end until we absolutely had to,” junior Brandon Rogalski said. “That kind of culminated in the last game, to where we got fed up with getting behind and having to come back…and then we just came back with a vengeance.”

Senior Ben Ingell’s grand slam, in the second inning of the second game against the Prairie Fire, was part of an 11-run inning that broke open a 3-2 Wash. U. lead. Ingell had four hits and seven RBIs as the team coasted to a 25-5 win, and went 8-for-10 in the day’s doubleheader.

Senior second baseman Travis May added six RBIs of his own, including a two-run homer in the first and a two-run triple in the third, but came just a double short of hitting for the cycle.

“After the first inning, it was another 3-2 game. We had just come off of an 11-10 win, and…we weren’t going to go through that again. Everything just sort of fell into place,” Rogalski said.

Wash. U. swept all five games this weekend, but needed to rally for three of those wins after slow starts on Saturday and Sunday.

“I’ve never seen anything like it….We put ourselves in position to lose at least three of those games, and if things hadn’t gone our way at the very end, and if certain guys hadn’t stepped up and been extremely clutch, we could be looking at very different results from the weekend,” head coach Steve Duncan said.

In the first game against Knox, with two outs in the final inning, the Bears scored two runs to take an 11-10 lead. Rogalski and freshman Kyle Billig each contributed an RBI double in the inning to cap off a five-run comeback.

The team also got three wins over Greenville College, with 8-7 and 12-10 victories on Saturday and a 9-5 win on Friday.

“A win is a win, but it was kind of disappointing to see how we played and force ourselves to come back, when we should have had five games like we did the last one, instead of having dramatic comeback victories,” Rogalski said.

Down 7-4 in the final inning of Saturday’s first game, after two quick outs, Wash. U. knotted the score on three hits. May’s two-run homer to right field sent the game into extra innings.

“He threw me a hanging offspeed pitch, which I naturally just turned on,” May said. “I knew right away it was gone, just because of the wind conditions and just finally feeling a ball come off the bat like I didn’t even hit it. That’s when you really know you hit it well.”

May also had a game-winning RBI single in the top of the ninth.

“A lot of the seniors really stepped up this weekend and Travis was the first to do so, on Saturday. It was just something else, to watch him,” Duncan said. “He was dialed in. To have the game-tying homerun and the game-winning hit in the same game, with all that pressure on, was just astounding.”

Though the Panthers loaded the bases with only one out in both the eighth and ninth innings, Rogalski induced two clutch double plays and successfully closed out the victories.

With the wins, the Bears now stand at 19-11 (3-3 UAA) on the season, and extended their current winning streak to eight games.

Josh Goldman | Student Life

Senior Matt Skinner singles through the box in game two of a doubleheader against Illinois College on Tuesday. Skinner went 6-7 over the two games and had 5 RBIs.

The Bears are now 13-11 on the season after sweeping a doubleheader against the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Thursday at Kelly Field. Wash. U. shut out the Pioneers 12-0 in the first game and took the second contest 5-3.

The team hopes to ride its hot streak into Sunday’s home doubleheader against No. 23 Carthage College. The team had been scheduled to play four games against the Red Men, and head coach Steve Duncan stressed that the team needed to win these games to keep its NCAA tournament hopes alive.

“We need to win three out of four of those, but I’m not all that concerned about how we play against good teams; we play extremely well against good teams,” Duncan said on Wednesday. “What we’re going to need to make a playoff run is more consistency against the other teams that we play the rest of the schedule. We can’t have letdowns.”

The Bears split their six games at the University Athletic Association Championships in Sanford, Fla., but came within a pitch of sharing the UAA Championship with Emory University and Case Western Reserve University.

Ahead 8-7 against Emory on March 14, senior H.T. Flanagan surrendered a walk-off homerun to senior Patrick Riebsame to give the Eagles (15-9, 5-1 UAA) the outright championship.

With the homer, Emory capped its comeback from the 7-0 deficit it faced heading into the bottom of the sixth inning.

“Without a doubt, we had [the championship] right there in our grasp. We had the taste of victory, and it just kind of slipped through our hands,” sophomore pitcher Stephen Bonser said. “Stuff goes wrong, we get a little bit of bad luck and it…slipped away from us.”

Back on campus, the Bears picked up double-header splits with Dominican University, Illinois College and defending NCAA Champion No. 11 Illinois Wesleyan University, as well as two wins over the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

The team earned its biggest win of the season so far, a 5-3 upset of Illinois Wesleyan last Saturday. The Bears scored three runs in the first inning and two in the seventh, and the team withstood a late-inning rally from the Titans to pick up the victory.

Though the Red and Green have fared well against some of the best teams in the country, their biggest disappointments have come in losses to teams that they should have been able to beat. Tuesday’s split with Illinois College was one of these disappointments.

“When we play a team that we know is going to be a really good team and a tough matchup that day, it’s just a whole different [level of] energy when we come to the game than when we play a team that we expect to beat pretty handily,” said senior Matt Skinner, the team’s starting first baseman. “We need to stop looking at what jersey we’re playing or what school we’re playing and just get pumped to play every single game and bring it to every team no matter who it is.”

Wash. U. was poised to sweep the Blue Boys of Illinois College behind Skinner’s monster day at the plate. The senior went six for seven with three doubles, a homerun and five RBIs over the two games; his two-run homerun in the sixth inning of the second game gave the Bears a 4-2 advantage. But Illinois College immediately took the lead on a three-RBI homer in the next inning and held on for the split.

“[Skinner’s performance] was something else,” Duncan said. “It was fun to watch him; he was dialed in, and every swing he put on the ball was squared up. He didn’t get any cheap hits. Not at all. His homerun…was one of the biggest hits of the year. It’s just unfortunate it wasn’t good enough to get us the win, but he was clutch.”

The Bears continue play Sunday, with a doubleheader at home against Carthage. The first game is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m.

“We’ve beaten some really good teams, and we’ve played well against tough teams,” Skinner said. “I don’t think we’re happy and satisfied with our record right now, but I honestly think we’re in a good position. If we keep winning games, we’ve beaten good enough teams that we still control our own destiny in regards to getting a [postseason] bid.”

The women’s team tied for 27th place with eight points, and the distance-medley relay squad of Jessica Londeree, Shannon Howell, Erica Jackey and Liz Phillips finished as national runners-up (11:49.01).

Josh Goldman | Student Life

Junior Brandon Rogalski delivers a pitch from the stretch against No. 18 College of St. Scholastica on Monday. Rogalski tossed five innings of two-run ball to record the team’s first victory over a ranked opponent on the season.

Just two weeks into its 2011 season, the Washington University baseball team feels that it has already faced off against, and survived, some of the best talent around.

The Bears have already taken on a Division-I opponent in St. Louis University, played a two-game series against No. 5 University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and, on Monday, split a doubleheader with No. 18 The College of St. Scholastica.

Wash. U. lost the first game 10-5 but rebounded for a narrow 3-2 victory over the Saints in the second.

The win was the first for the Bears against a ranked program under new head coach Steve Duncan.

“All the innings except the last inning of the first game, we were in the game and were competing with [St. Scholastica],” junior Brandon Rogalski said. “They’re a top-20 team, so we feel like we can compete with anybody out there.”

Jumping on the Bears’ starting pitcher Adam Merzel early in the first game, St. Scholastica scored four runs on five hits in the first inning. Two of the runs came on centerfielder Joe Link’s homerun to left field.

After surrendering the early lead, Merzel settled down, giving up just one more earned run in his five innings pitched.

Wash. U. added three runs of its own in the bottom of the inning, on Rogalski’s RBI-single and senior Matt Bayer’s two-out two-RBI double.

“Just seeing the way their pitchers threw…we knew that we could come back. It was good to [score those runs] in the first inning, and we wish we could’ve gotten more runs in that game, in general,” Bayer said. “It seemed like every time that we would come back a little bit, they would get another run, and that’s because they’re a good team.”

The two teams battled back-and-forth until the seventh, where the Saints, leading 7-5, put the game out of reach with three more runs.

Rogalski started the second game of the doubleheader and picked up a victory behind five innings of work. He gave up six hits and walked three batters, but limited St. Scholastica to just one earned run.

“[After my last start], I knew I needed to work on throwing first-pitch strikes, and I feel like I accomplished that,” Rogalski said. “I felt like I had a lot more control this game, and I made a bunch of clutch pitches when it was [a] full-count, bases loaded [situation]. That really turned out well for us.”

Reminiscent of the first game, the Saints nearly jumped in front in the first inning, loading the bases with just one out on an error, a hit and a walk. However, Rogalski forced Brandon Peterson to hit into a double play, bringing the inning to a close.

In total, St. Scholastica left 12 men on base, again coming up empty after loading the bases in the third inning. The Saints did manage to score two runs in the fifth on an error and a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch.

In the bottom of the first inning, Rogalski’s RBI-double, coming with runners on first and second and one out, gave the Bears an early 1-0 lead. The next batter, Bayer, flew out to center field, allowing a runner on third to score.

The Bears added another run in the second inning, taking a 3-0 lead that would last through the end of the game. Sophomore Max Gordon pitched two scoreless innings to earn the save.

On Thursday, the team will travel to Sanford, Fla. to take on Case Western Reserve University in its first game of the 2011 University Athletic Association (UAA) championships.

“Winning the UAA is something that we haven’t done in a number of years, so I think that it would be a huge pick-me-up, and it would show all the outside observers…that we really are contenders and that we’re out there to win,” Rogalski said.

Though the Bears are just 3-5 on the season and have dropped three out of the last four games, they feel that they have played a tough enough schedule to win the UAA.

“We’re extremely prepared, and we’re very excited to go down to Florida because we know that we’ve faced the best competition out of anybody going down there,” Bayer said. “We just really want to get there and put on a good showing.”