TONKAWA, OKLAHOMA -- The Ellsworth baseball team notched one win in its season-opening road trip to take on Northern Oklahoma-Tonkawa.  Although the host school won three of the four games played Saturday and Sunday the Panthers did claim a hard-fought 7-6 victory in the 3rd game of the set, Sunday's first contest.

In that game, Ellsworth got an insurance run in the top of the 7th inning to go ahead 7-5 and even though the Mavericks pushed across a run in the bottom of the 7th, Charlie Jaeger snuffed out the rally to seal the victory for the Panthers.  Jaeger was solid in his relief outing, giving up just one hit and one earned run in 3 1/3 innings of work, striking out four while walking only one.  He replaced Miguel Baez, who started and worked 3 2/3 innings.  Zeb Wede and Bryce Hall each drove in a pair of runs for ECC and Isaac Boley and Javier Melendez both had one RBI.  The top two batters in the lineup, Boley and Wede, scored twice each and Jose Valentin, Hall, and JT Kostenbauer also scored.  Catcher Kristian Crespo drew a couple of walks.  The Panthers scored three times in the 1st inning and twice in the 2nd.  Single runs in the 4th and 7th rounded out their scoring.

Ellsworth pushed across a run in their first inning of the season on Saturday, but they tallied only one more run the rest of the day in dropping both games of the twinbill, 6-2 and 11-0.  Boley supplied most of the offense in the opener with a double and triple from the leadoff spot and he scored both ECC runs.  The RBIs went to Elio Narvaez and Melendez.  Wede had the only other hit.  Gavin Busby got the start on the mound and threw 4 innings, allowing 5 hits and 3 earned runs.  Ethan Whitham came on and pitched two innings of hitless relief with one earned run allowed.

The Mavericks' Carter Hines fired a no-hitter in Saturday's second game, facing one batter over the minimum.  He issued walks to Wede, Melendez and Valentin and two runners were caught stealing.  Derihan Suero and Jason Moist did the pitching for ECC.

Northern Oklahoma-Tonkawa closed out the series with a 15-0 romp in game two Sunday, after the Panthers' earlier one-run win.  Ellsworth was limited to three hits, all singles, by Boley, Melendez and Diego Dinzey.  Four pitchers saw action -- starter Edwin De Los Santos, Jonathan Rosado, Colton Sanders and Simon Victoriano.  They allowed only 8 hits but walked 9.

The Panthers are back on the road next weekend when they travel to Millington, Tennessee, to play two games on Saturday and one Sunday.