GAME STATS PICTURED ABOVE: John Johnson and Matt Schappell each had two hits in Wheaton's 15-5 loss to North Park on Saturday.

Carol Stream, Ill.- The Wheaton Thunder baseball team dropped the rubber match of this weekend's three-game series with the North Park Vikings by a score of 15-5 on Saturday. Mistakes proved to be too much for the Thunder in the contest as Wheaton surrendered nine walks, six unearned runs on three errors and four balks in the contest. North Park had an answer for ever yThunder run, scoring in every inning except the first. Wheaton is now 6-16 overall and 2-6 in CCIW play.

North Park (13-10, 6-2 CCIW) jumped out a 9-0 lead thanks to five unearned runs in the third inning and a two-out home run by Lou Diaz in the fourth inning. Finally in the bottom of the fourth inning, John Johnson got the Thunder on the board by hammering the first pitch from Alex Silverthorne over the wall in left-center field to make it 9-1. Johnson was 2-3 on the day.

In the sixth, consecutive singles by Phil Tuttle and Justin Swider to open the inning led to an RBI sacrifice fly by Kyle Mellinger to make it 10-2.

Wheaton cashed in on Matt Schappell's one-out triple in the bottom of the seventh when Alex MaLossi recorded an RBI groundout. Schappell was 2-3 with a double and a triple. The Thunder then took advantage of the only North Park error of the day when Matt Ferretti scored from first on a dropped fly ball in left field off the bat of Tuttle. Swider (PICTURED RIGHT) followed by lining a RBI single through the left side to make it 11-5.

The Vikings again answered with four in the top of the eighth and held the Thunder in the bottom half to earn a 15-5 run-rule victory in eight innings.

Wheaton will be back in action on Wednesday when they travel to Elmhurst for the rubber match of their three-game series at 3 PM.