BELTON — The 2026 UMHB baseball season may be just two weeks old. But The Cru hasn’t wasted any time making waves on a national level.
Playing under the lights at Lake Belton High School on Saturday night, UMHB’s bats caught fire in the third inning and the bullpen held serve for the next six, powering The Cru to a statement-making series win over 15th-ranked Webster that turned heads across the country.
The Cru won Saturday night’s decisive duel, 10-7, following up on Friday evening’s 11-1 rout, giving UMHB (3-3) its first series win of 2026. After Webster (1-2) scored the final three runs in a 7-4 victory in the series opener on Friday, UMHB responded by taking the next two, earning its second and third wins of the season against Top 15 competition.
UMHB is now 2-0 in Game 3s to start the 2026 campaign, having also beaten No. 12 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, 8-6, on Feb. 8. Just six games in, the Crusaders are already just one win away from tying their 2025 win total vs nationally-ranked opponents (4), with a pair of three-game series against No. 16 La Verne and No. 25 ETBU still to come.
Notably, the 2-1 weekend also gave UMHB head coach Mike Stawski the 350th win of his coaching career, which has included previous head coaching stints at Spalding and Concordia-Chicago. He is 119-101 in seven seasons leading UMHB.
The offense proved itself in all three contests against the Gorloks, who posted a 3.42 ERA 2025 and returned two All-American pitchers in Ryan Greifelt and Carter Hunt.
The Cru chased Greifelt from Game 1 after 4.1 innings, scoring four runs on seven hits with Webster’s ace on the mound. UMHB tied the score at 4-4 in the fifth thanks to Taylor McDaniel’s sac fly, which came after solo homers from Riley Bender and Nolan Williams earlier on. Even when trailing 6-4 in the eighth, The Cru loaded the bases with one out, continuing to put runners on base in the eventual three-run loss.
That was only the appetizer to the offensive outburst that followed in the nightcap, in which UMHB pushed 11 runs across to run-rule the Gorloks in eight innings. The Cru got on the board in the second, when Jasson Hemmerling Jr. was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded, and extended that lead to 3-0 by the third, before going on a tear in the sixth, seventh, and eighth. In those three innings, UMHB put up eight runs, highlighted by Cameron Talburt’s two-RBI double to the right center field gap, stretching the advantage to 7-0.
Talburt had a memorable day, stealing four bases along with two hits and a pair of RBIs in the leadoff spot. The right fielder pushed UMHB’s lead to 9-1 in the eighth, when he used his speed to score on a wild pitch, and moments later, Williams drove a pitch into left field, bringing Jesse Hemmerling and Bender across.
Williams secured the run-rule as part of a terrific 5-for-5 day at the plate, accounting for three RBIs and three runs scored. The centerfielder kept it going in Game 3, drawing a walk in the third before coming around to break the 3-3 tie on Braden Fuentes’ go-ahead RBI double. Williams, a sophomore from Salado, is hitting .476 on the season with six RBIs and two home runs.
Fuentes was stellar at the plate in the series finale as well, going 2-for-3 with two runs scored in his first start of the weekend. One spot further down the order, shortstop Easton Cline had three hits in the 10-run effort, driving in Fuentes for a 10-6 lead in the sixth.
UMHB’s third inning provided the bulk of the offensive production, with nine runs coming across as The Cru sent 15 batters to the plate. The marathon inning saw UMHB tally six hits while capitalizing on three straight hit-by-pitches with two outs, and back-to-back walks. The second of those two walks came with the bases loaded, as Bender scored to tie the game at 3-3. In the span of a single half-inning, UMHB went from a three-run hole to a six-run lead, and while Webster found some offense of its own in a three-run fifth, the Gorloks trailed the rest of the way.
Containing the Gorlok bats was a credit to UMHB’s pitching, especially in Games 2 and 3. In Game 2, starter Alex Hill struck out 10 batters for the second weekend in a row, containing Webster for six innings. The sophomore surrendered just two hits en route to earning his first win of 2026, with Reid Davis and Carter Kammlah closing it out in relief.
Game 3 saw Zach Hampton take over out of the bullpen with two outs in the second inning, striking out two of the six batters he faced. Hampton allowed a run but got UMHB out of the third without any further damage, and his time on the mound coincided with The Cru’s big inning at the plate, giving the freshman the second win of his college career.
Mason Semmelmann provided 2.1 innings of solid relief as well, pitching for the second time in the series. The right-hander struck out three of the seven batters he faced and did not allow a baserunner, stabilizing UMHB after Webster cut into the deficit with three in the fifth.
UMHB’s seven-game opening homestand wraps up against Schreiner on Tuesday night in Belton, before the Crusaders head south to Georgetown for a Friday night tilt at Southwestern. Schreiner bounced back from an 0-3 start by claiming a series win over Centenary this weekend, with the Mountaineers taking the first two games from the sixth-ranked team in the SCAC’s Preseason Poll. UMHB went 2-1 against Schreiner in 2025 and is 46-20 against the Mountaineers since 1999.
