WASHINGTON - No. 24 The Catholic University of America baseball team split its Landmark Conference doubleheader with Elizabethtown College on Friday afternoon. The Cardinals topped the Blue Jays 9-4 in game one and fell 17-4 in game two.

In game one, Catholic junior Jon Mierzwa tossed five strikeouts to record the win and improve his overall season record to 4-0. Sophomore Eric Moore entered as relief during the final inning and threw one strikeout.

Senior Brennan Cotter went 3-of-3 at the plate including two homeruns and a double to record a total of five RBIs and three runs during the first game. Cotter drove in Catholic's first two runs in the opening inning with a long shot to left field which brought home fellow senior Jake Crist and junior Ryan Tracy.

Sophomore Connor Cozad added two more to the Cardinals score in the first inning with a two-RBI single that brought home Cotter and junior Bailey Lewis. Later in the inning, Cozad came across the plate on a sacrifice fly from sophomore Connor Sullivan which gave Catholic a 5-0 lead.

The Blue Jays answered with two runs in the top of the third before Cotter lobbed a solo homer over the right field wall in the bottom of the inning.

Trailing 6-2 the Elizabethtown put one run on the board in the fourth and added another in the fifth to bring their final tally to four.

Hungry for the league victory, Cotter fired his second home run of the day over the fence to score Crist and himself in the bottom of the fifth. Fellow senior Jack Hennessy added Catholic's final RBI of the triumph on a suicide squeeze to score sophomore Christian Jones.

Elizabethtown rallied in the second game and scored at least one run in eight-of-nine innings by capitalizing on Catholic miscues. They collected four runs in both the third and fourth innings and left just the fifth inning blank.

Cotter registered his fourth RBI of the day when he drove in Tracy in the third inning of game two. He later brought home Hennessey after Crist drove in sophomore Will Pyne in the sixth inning.

Junior Anthony Ferlise scored Catholic's final run of the day on a solo-homer over the left-field wall in the seventh inning.

The Cardinals and Blue Jays are set to wrap up the Landmark series with a nine-inning game on Sunday, April 8 at 2:00 p.m.

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