Chicago, Ill. - The Thunder baseball team dropped the first of three games this weekend against the North Park Vikings, falling 11-4 at the Holmgren Athletic Complex on Friday night. With pitching taking the headlines early on, the North Park offense got up and running in the fourth inning and didn't look back, scoring in each of their last five times at the plate to improve to 12-13 on the year and 7-13 in the CCIW. Wheaton falls to 8-18 overall and 4-14 in the CCIW. The Thunder and Vikings will wrap up their four-game season series on Saturday with a doubleheader scheduled for a 1 pm first pitch at Lee Pfund Stadium.

With Jacob Garrity holding the Vikings down in the opening frames, Wheaton threatened to score first with a two-out double by Ben Weaver in the top of the first and again in the top of the second inning by loading the bases with two outs, but Graham Core's line drive couldn't find a hole as the Vikings tip-toed out of danger. Garrity then shut down a Viking rally in the third inning, stranding runners on the corners to keep the game scoreless.

North Park broke the scoreless tie with a run in the bottom of the fourth inning but Wheaton answered immediately with Tyler Weiner leading off the top of the fifth inning with his first collegiate home run to tie it at 1-1. Jake Reinhardt broke the tie in the bottom of the fifth with a two-run home run but Noah Ritchie led off the top of the sixth with a single and Joel Pierce followed with a two-run home run to knot the score back up at 3-3.

Garrity appeared set to cruise through the bottom of the sixth inning, starting the inning with consecutive strikeouts to bring his total to the game for nine marking his third-consecutive start with nine or more strikeouts. However, a single and double would chase the Thunder senior as the Vikings went on to score five runs on four hits capped off by a three-run home run by Reinhardt to take an 8-3 lead. North Park added a run in the seventh and two more in the eighth inning to extend the lead to 11-3. Ben Weaver's two-out single in the top of the ninth inning brought in Weiner with the final run of the game.

Eight of Wheaton's ten hits came from the quartet of Ben Weaver, Joel Pierce, Tyler Weiner, and Harrison Stanton who each recorded two-hit games. Pierce drove in two runs with Weiner scoring twice. Graham Core recorded his CCIW-leading 17th stolen base of the season and ran his streak to 18 stolen bases without a caught stealing dating back to last season.