WASHINGTON – Freshman Paul Burmester, who leads the Cardinal batting statistics with a .329 average on 79 at bats, recorded a career-high three homeruns during Catholic's doubleheader split with the Mariners of Merchant Marine.

CUA defeated the Mariners 6-0 in game one with Burmester notching two homers in the win.  USMMA went on to defeat the Cards 6-5, which included Burmester's third homerun.

Both squads went scoreless in the first inning.  Burmester opened the Catholic scoring effort with a homerun.  Brett Padula sacrificed himself to score Wyatt Schmidt and Stefan Poggioli singled and created a throwing error to score Eric Scamardella.

Mike McFarland tallied his seven double of the season to score Hinchcliff and Schmidt in the third.

Burmester's homerun in the fifth was the final run of the contest.

Andrew Carroll anchored the mound for all seven innings, allowing two hits and four strikeouts against 22 batters.

USMMA committed two errors and registers two hits.

The Cards opened game two with a 3-0 lead by the end of the third.  The Mariners answered back with four runs in the top of the fourth, taking a 4-3 lead.  USMMA advanced the lead to 6-3 with their final two runs of the game in the top of the fifth.

On Burmester's last homerun, the Cardinals were now down 6-4 at the end of the fifth.

Catholic had one last opportunity to take the win or send the game into extra inning with their last time at bat.  With two outs on the board, Nick Clary grounded out to second base, scoring Padula for one run, followed by an unfortunate groundout to the shortstop by Burmester.

Kevin Farley recorded the loss in his 3.2 innings by allowing four hits, four errors, four runs and three walks.

Catholic continues the Landmark Conference weekend with a single contest on Saturday at 11:00 a.m.

-CUA-