After cruising past Missouri Military Academy 16-4 on April 14 on the road, the Wellsville-Middletown baseball team has certainly guaranteed one thing.

It will not finish with another winless season.

The Tigers snapped a 24-game losing streak with the victory over MMA, making it their first win since May 11, 2023. Their 16 runs marked a season high.

“It feels nice,” W-M sophomore catcher Gage Nichols said. “I hope we can win a couple of more games this season, show that we have improved and that we only got to go up from here.”

Last year, the Tigers lost all 16 games, making it their first winless season since 2013. W-M lost its first seven games before topping the Colonels in a battle of winless teams. The Tigers scored three runs in the first, two in the second, six in the fifth and five in the sixth. The game ended after the sixth inning due to the 10-run rule.

“The funny thing was I really anticipated them being more amped up and it was almost like they came more focused,” W-M coach Alex Thull said. “It was what was expected. We were going to win and we were going to move on from this game.”

W-M couldn’t pull off another victory on April 16 when it took on Van-Far at home. The Tigers lost 23-5 in three innings. They scored all of their runs in the bottom of the third.

W-M trailed 14-0 after the first inning and never recovered. The Tigers gave up 20 or more runs for the second time this season.

“This team is still young enough that when we get down, we struggle to come out of it,” Thull said. “We freaked out and one error became two and it snowballed. We battled and we were able to get some runs on the board later. They’re young, but they’re resilient and they work hard for it. They have to be able to transition how good we are in practice to game type situations, especially at home. I feel like we play our best games away, where there’s no crowd.”

With the loss, W-M’s losing streak in Eastern Missouri Conference play was extended to 17 games. The Tigers were scheduled to play Elsberry on April 21 and host Mark Twain on April 24.

“The hard part about being in this conference is you’re playing schools that are two or three times your size,” Thull said. “When we play the schools that are our size, those are the games that you have to win or least show improvement. When we’re playing Marion County, Madison or R-6, those are the teams that we should be able to compete with and beat.”

The Tigers returned 10 players from last year’s team – Nichols, seniors Wyatt Moore, Brennan Cash and Cooper Henderson, junior Isaac Todd and sophomores Shane Joles, Cameron Pittker, Evan Bryson, Chase Mitchell and Willard Shireman. They also have five freshmen.

“We have great kids,” Thull said. “They all show up. Ninety of our male students in the building play baseball. It’s the place they want to be because it keeps them out of trouble and it gives them something to do. It’s something positive. Even with as long as that losing streak was, none of those kids ever gave up. They kept working. They kept coming. They came all summer. They played other sports. We’re doing the right things.”

Thull said Moore, who was the losing pitcher against Van-Far, has turned in strong efforts for his team after a month.

“Wyatt is batting over .500 right now and has a .700 on-base percentage,” Thull said. “He has all-conference numbers in both batting and in the field. He is almost perfect in the outfield. He makes plays and guys rally around him.”

The Tigers’ offense has improved tremendously from 2024. After the loss to Van-Far, the Tigers increased their run total to 34, almost tripling the 2024 total of 12.

“We’re playing better baseball,” Thull said. “We’re turning it around.”

W-M came close to picking up its first win of the season on April 8. The Tigers lost 11-10 to Marion County in eight innings.

“Marion County was a pretty good team,” Thull said. “We just needed to play very smart in that game. Yeah, they scored a lot of runs, but a lot of it came from back and forth situations in baseball. We came back from four runs down in the seventh inning to tie it up.”

The Tigers have 10 regular season games remaining, including a rematch with MMA on May 6 at home. Nichols said he hopes his team picks up more wins as its season approaches its final month.

“I think we need to lift each other up and play how we play in practice because practices go very well,” the sophomore said. “If we show it in games, get our bats going and hype each other up, I think we’ll do pretty good.”