CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. – The No. 3 seed Cairn University baseball team was eliminated from the Colonial States Athletic Conference (CSAC) Championship Tournament after dropping both game of a best-of-three series at No. 2 seed Wilson College in the CSAC Semifinals on Sunday afternoon, falling 5-1 in game one before dropping a 10-4 decision in game two.
 
Cairn (25-16) engaged in a defensive duel early with Wilson (30-9) as neither team scored through two innings of play. The Phoenix struck first in the third inning, plating three runs to take a 3-0 lead. Wilson added to its advantage in the sixth inning with two more run and led 5-0 after six. Cairn attempted to crawl back into it after loading the bases in the bottom of the eighth inning, but the Highlanders only managed one run and took a 5-1 deficit into the ninth. Cairn once again loaded the bases in the ninth inning with two outs, but a strikeout ended the Cairn threat and granted game one to the Phoenix.
 
Senior Joshua Melchior (Boyertown, PA / Valley Forge Baptist Academy) led the offensive effort with one hit while reaching base four times in the contest. Graduate Student Carson Conradt (Chino Hills, CA / Chino Hills) turned in an admirable performance in his final collegiate start, going six innings, scattering eight hits and five runs. Conradt finishes his career with 164 strikeouts, the second-most k's by a Highlander pitcher in program history.
 
In a decisive game two for the Highlanders, both teams remained scoreless through three innings of play before Wilson got on the board first with a run in the bottom of the fourth inning. Cairn knotted the game up a 1-1 after freshman Jared Sucro (Kamloops, British Columbia / St. Ann's Academy) delivered an RBI-single in the fifth frame. The Phoenix added three more runs in the bottom half and held a 3-1 lead going into the seventh inning. Needing a big offensive output to stay in the contest, Cairn got the big blow it needed courtesy of graduate student Brian Amantia Jr. (Columbus, NJ / King's Christian) who hammered a three-run home run the opposite way to give Cairn a 4-3 lead in the top of the seventh frame. Unfortunately, Wilson had a resounding answer to the tune of six runs in the bottom half of the inning and that was enough to put away the Highlanders and end their dream season.
 
Amantia led the Highlanders offensively with three RBIs off of his three-run homer. With that long shot, Amantia set a new program record for home runs in a single season with his tenth bomb of the 2022 campaign. Junior Cameron Culver (Croydon, PA / Truman) got the start on the bump in game two, hurling 4.1 innings, scattering four hits and three runs for the Highlanders.
 
Cairn finished the season with an overall record of 25-16 and was 8-4 in conference play. The Highlander's 25 wins set a new program record for wins in a season and their 13-game win streak through the midway point of their campaign is the longest win streak in school history.