VALDOSTA, Ga. – The Auburn Montgomery baseball team scored a season-high 12 runs on 17 base hits en route to a 12-6 victory over Valdosta State in game one of their weekend Gulf South Conference series on Saturday, Feb. 20.
 
The win marks for AUM's fifth in a row, bringing their record to 5-2 in 2021. 
 
Seven Warhawks knocked two or more hits on the day, with Zach Feaster's four-hit, three-run performance leading the way. The sophomore catcher also slugged a pair of doubles and drove in a run.
 
Quinterrious Arrington, Jackson Ceman, and Joseph Hartsfield all drove in two runs on a pair of hits while Hartsfield scored three times.  
 
Casey Henderson and Sage Smelley both added two hits, an RBI, and a run scored for the Orange and Black.
 
Micah Henderson (3-0) earned his team-best third win on the day, surrendering two earned runs over 5.1 inning with three strikeouts. The senior right-hander settled in after a four-run first to throw 4.1 scoreless innings the rest of the way.
 
Will Collins struck out two batters in two-thirds of an inning while Sam Steigert tossed the final two scoreless frames for AUM. 
 
The Blazers came out swinging in the first inning, with four runs on three hits. 
 
The Warhawks responded in the top of the second, however, with three runs on three hits to make it a 4-3 game. Ceman accounted for the big blow in the inning with a two-out, two-RBI single while Arrington contributed another two-out knock to drive in one. 
 
AUM would up go 7-4 in inning number four behind four runs on four hits, with a pair of VSU errors. The two Blazer errors in the frame resulted in two runs coming across while a Henderson RBI single and a Smelley RBI walk accounted for the other two runs.  
 
The Warhawks would get RBI base hits from Arrington in the fifth and Hartsfield in the sixth to expand their lead to 9-4.
 
After a two-run seventh inning from the Blazers, AUM would tack on three more runs over their final two at-bats. The Warhawks got a pair of runs in the eighth on a wild pitch and a Hartsfield sac fly, and one run in the ninth on a Feaster RBI single.
 
 "I'm proud of how we battled today," Head Coach Marty Lovrich said. "They got out on top of us early, but we didn't cave and fought our way back. Credit goes out to Micah (Henderson) for settling in after the first and tossing four-plus solid innings after that to give our offense a chance to hang up some crooked numbers." 
 
Of the Warhawks 45 total at-bats on the day, 33 came with runners on base. AUM batted .333 (11-33) with runners on while stranding 12 base runners. 
 
The Warhawks scored six of their 12 runs with two outs and reached base to lead off an inning in five of nine frames. 
 
The baseball team will wrap up their GSC series against the Blazers with a doubleheader on Sunday, Feb. 21 at 12:00 p.m. (CST). 
 
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