After a rocky start to the season the Hartford Hawks Baseball team currently sits on top of the America East Conference with a 6-2 record in conference play and a 12-15 record overall. But that is not the only thing that the Hawks are topping the charts in, this week three players on the team all won awards making it a clean sweep of the America East weekly awards. The three players that won awards include Mike Amendola, Weston Szymanski and Simon Kudernatsch a freshman on the team this year.
Amendola won the player of the week after being the second leading batter over a five game week. As a matter of fact, he was the red hot batter for the hawks as he posted a .474 BA with nine hits in 19 at bats. In this past Saturday’s double header against the Stony Brook Sea wolves Amendola went 5 for 8 with an RBI and three runs scored.
Meanwhile, on the mound Szymanski put on a show himself pitching his second complete game of the season giving up seven hits and helping the Hawks come away with a 5-2 win in the series opener against Stony Brook. To go along with this, Szymanski did not walk anyone the entire game and came away with six strikeouts in a nine innings. Pitching has been a problem in the past for Hartford but with performances like this it may not be to much of a problem any more.
To complete the sweep of awards Freshman Simon Kudernatsch took the rookie of the week award after putting on a stellar performance including batting .600 in 15 plate appearances and reaching base 13 times off of nine hits and a couple of walks. The rookie played in all five games for the Hawks this past week and struck out just one time in his many at bats. A lot of rookie players have stepped up this year for all Hartford Sports teams so it is no surprise that there is another rookie making his way up the batting order on this red hot Hartford Hawks baseball team.
As they are red hot, the Hawks have some tough games upcoming this week starting with a good team right down the street in the UCONN Huskies who defeat the Hawks in their last meeting. After the Huskies, the Hawks will travel to Rhode Island and face the URI Rams and than it is off to New Jersey to battle the NJIT Highlanders in what should be an interesting match up. It will also be interesting to see if the Hawks are able to keep their winning ways and hang on to first place in the conference and maybe an American East Championship can be talked about .