Blackburn College Take First Conference Victory Over MacMurray College

Baseball in Illinois News

The Blackburn College Baseball Team racked up 21 hits enroute to an 18-1 run-rule victory at MacMurray College on Tuesday afternoon.


Senior Right-hander Ben Eilerman pitched all seven innings for Blackburn striking out 10 while walking just one. Eilerman moved to 1-3 on the season as the Beavers improve to 4-9.

Blackburn scored three runs in the top of the 1st inning, the first two on a two-run single by Jacob Hainsfurther. The Beavers made it 4-0 after two and then blew the game open with an 11-run third inning. The big hits were a two-run homerun by freshman Cody Unser and a three-run homer by Josh Glisson. Unser also had a two-run single in the same inning. Blackburn added two runs in the sixth inning and one in the seventh to round out the scoring.

Blackburn Baseball Winter Hitting Clinic

Baseball in Illinois News

The Blackburn College Baseball team will be hosting a three-day Winter Hitting Clinic for high school players, February 13-15 in the Dawes Gymnasium on the campus of Blackburn College. The clinic is broken down into four individual sessions each day and no more than two players from the same high school may register for the same session per Illinois High School Association rules.


Each session will last for two hours and will consist of hitting and bunting drills and instruction on stance, stride, swing path, weight transfer and finish. Each hitter will also be put on video and have analysis through the Right-View Pro hitting computer program.

Clinic instructors include Blackburn College Head Coach Mike Neal who brings twenty years of college-coaching experience to the clinic as well as area high school coaches and Blackburn College players. Also expected to make guest appearances are Bob Simpson co-owner of Hit Repair, a state of the art hitting academy in southern Illinois as well as Rend Lake College Head Coach Tony Etnier.

Players will receive 2 hours of instruction daily and a T-shirt for the cost of $65. For more information or to request a brochure please contact Blackburn coach Mike Neal at (217) 854-3231 ext. 4334 or by email at mneal@blackburn.edu.

Blackburn Baseball Releases 2010 Schedule

Blackburn College Head Baseball Coach Mike Neal released the 2010 Spring Schedule today. The schedule once again boasts an incredible 7-game spring trip, where the Beavers will tackle outstanding opponents on outstanding playing fields down in the gulf south.


The Beavers, which look to improve on a 14-19 campaign a year ago, open the season at home on March 3rd against St. Louis Christian College, an opponent Blackburn has not played since 1999. After a road contest at Millikin University the next day, the Beavers will embark on the annual spring trip. The trip begins in Memphis, Tennessee, where Blackburn will play Rhodes College on Sunday, March 7. “Rhodes has a first class program with top-notch facilities and will be a strong test and a tough beginning to our trip,” said Neal. The next day the Beavers will take on Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi, where the Choctaws have defeated the Beavers the last two seasons. After that, it is on to New Orleans, Louisiana where Blackburn will take on Loyola University of New Orleans in back to back night games on Tuesday and Wednesday. “Our players get the opportunity to experience the great city of New Orleans while competing in a beautiful stadium against an always tough wolfpack team,” said Neal. Blackburn and Loyola split the two-game series a year ago. The trip then wraps up with a three-game series at Huntingdon College on the weekend in Montgomery, Alabama, before returning home.

After getting back from spring break, the Beavers have one final non-conference matchup against Lincoln Christian University at home on March 16 in a 12:30 p.m. doubleheader, before beginning the 24-game St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference portion of the schedule. Blackburn will open conference play at home on March 20, taking on MacMurray College for a doubleheader before traveling to Jacksonville the next day to finish the series. After an odd nine-day break in the schedule, the Beavers travel to Greenville College to open that series on March 30 with a doubleheader. The next weekend series is against Principia College with a home single game on April 2 before the doubleheader on the 3rd in Elsah. Blackburn and Greenville finish their series on April 7 with a 3 p.m. single game, which is the beginning of an eight-game home-stand with Westminster (3), Webster (2), and Fontbonne (2) rounding out the opponents for those games. After finishing series’ with Fontbonne and Webster on the road, Blackburn travels to Louisville, Kentucky to take on Spalding University in the first ever SLIAC contests between the two programs. Blackburn ends the season taking on Eureka College with the series beginning before final exams and ending after final exams on May 5.

“Once again our early spring break is very challenging as we generally play better competition than what we find in our conference, with the goal of raising our level of play to ready ourselves to compete in the SLIAC,” said Neal.

Blackburn College is located in Carlinville, Illinois.