April 22, 2023, GRAND RAPIDS Mich. – Aaron Bess and Andres Rivera-Calderon helped the Grand Rapids Community College baseball team win its 16th and 17th consecutive games with walk-off hits in extra innings against conference rival Muskegon Community College on Saturday.
The softball team split its doubleheader, with Izzy Regner picking up her 15th win of the season.
Bess' sacrifice fly in the bottom of the 13th inning gave GRCC a 3-2 opening day victory that took nearly four hours.
GRCC (26-10, 18-1) led 2-1 before Muskegon tied the game in the fifth inning. Both teams were scoreless for the next five innings before Bess' bases loaded sacrifice fly won the game for the Raiders.
Jake Guminey led the team with three of team’s GRCC’s 12 hits.
Caden VanDeBurg pitched the final five innings for GRCC to pick up his first win of the season. He allowed just three hits while striking out seven.
GRCC rallied from being down 5-1 after three innings, but won the nightcap 6-5 in eight innings.
Fernando Rivera-Calderon led off the bottom of the eighth with a triple and three batters later his brother Andres singled in the game-winning run.
Blake Waibel picked up the victory in relief of starter Colton Leatherman.
The softball team split a doubleheader for the second day in a row.
The team got off to a 2-0 lead in the first game of their doubleheader. But in the fifth inning, Muskegon took advantage of three Raider errors and scored six unearned runs to pull ahead 8-2 and hung on to win 8-3.
Brynn McArthur had two of the team's three hits.
In game two, Regner took a perfect game into the fourth inning, and picked up the win in a 6-5 victory.
The perfect game was broken up after a leadoff bunt single in the fourth. Despite giving up three earned runs, she still struck out 13 batters while walking just one.
Lauren James was a perfect three-for-three in the game, including her third home run of the season.
Both teams will finish off their season series Sunday at 1 p.m.
This story was reported by Ben Brown.