In their Great Lakes Valley Conference season opener, the William Jewell College baseball team split a doubleheader against Rockhurst University, Saturday afternoon. The Cardinals won a 6-2 decision in the first game before falling 5-2 in the second contest.  Jewell moves to 7-10 overall and 1-1 in the GLVC while Rockhurst goes to 13-9 overall and 1-1 in league play.
 
In the first game, Jewell jumped out to an early 3-0 lead in the first inning when senior Garrett McKinzie singled home a run and Zach Saalfeld brought in Dylan Christie and McKinzie with a two-run double.
 
Rockhurst closed the gap to 3-2 when they scored two in the top of the sixth but Jewell added a single run in the sixth and two more in the seventh for the winning margin. 
 
Senior Vijay Patel had eight strikeouts and only allowed two runs in 6.2 innings pitched to pick up his first win of the season.
 
Rockhurst jumped out to an early lead in game two, scoring their first run in the second inning only to see Jewell tie it up at 1 in the bottom of the frame. 
 
From that point it became a pitchers dual between the Hawks' Henry Weiler and Jewell's Zach Hutcherson. 
 
In the bottom of the fifth, junior Tyler Carpenter launched his first homerun of the season a solo shot, to give Jewell a 2-1 lead. 
 
Hutcherson (2-3) took the lead to the seventh and final inning only to see Rockhurst rally and tie the game 2-2.  The Hawks then scored three more in the eighth to take game two.
 
The Cardinals will wrap up their weekend series with Rockhurst with another doubleheader on Sunday beginning at 12:00 p.m.