By: Evan O'Kelly, Associate Commissioner for Communications

PORTLAND, Ore. – A 12-game winning streak is hard to come by in college baseball, particularly within the Great Northwest Athletic Conference.
 
The Northwest Nazarene Nighthawks (27-10, 16-3 GNAC) have been hard at work constructing just the fifth streak of 12 or more wins since the league was formed in 2002, as the defending champions have surged to the top of the GNAC standings. It has been nearly a decade since a GNAC team strung together this many victories in a row, the 2016 Western Oregon squad being the last to do so with 13 straight wins.
 

Longest Winning Streaks – GNAC Baseball History (Since 2002)
Team	Season	Streak	Start	End
Western Oregon	2006	17	April 12	May 6
Western Oregon	2010	17	March 27	April 23
Western Oregon	2016	13	April 2	April 17
Western Oregon	2008	12	March 15	April 12
Northwest Nazarene	2025	12	March 8	Current

The Nighthawks took down Western Oregon (6-14, 9-20) last week at home, winning each game by at least five runs and earning GNAC Team of the Week honors. The streak started on March 8 with an 11-0 win over Montana State Billings, before the Nighthawks swept Central Washington in a four-game series and swept Saint Martin’s in a three-game series. In the eyes of seventh-year head coach Joe Schaefer, his team has struck a chord combining lights-out pitching with gritty at-bats offensively. “Having (Cole) Calnon and (Ernesto) Lugo for half your series be able to go out and dominate definitely helps,” Schaefer said on a 1-2 punch of aces on his pitching staff. “The rest of our staff is starting to solidify, and guys are falling into roles they’re having success in and that’s helping us a ton. We have pitched well over the last three weeks.”
 
At the heart of NNU’s success this spring has been a pitching staff that ranks No. 16 in Division II baseball with a team ERA of 3.94. NNU’s 286 strikeouts (8.60/9 innings) are the most in the GNAC and its 93 walks issued (2.8/9 innings) are the fewest in the GNAC, resulting in the sixth-best strikeout-to-walk ratio in Division II at 3.08. The Nighthawks’ six shutouts are the second most in the country and their opponents’ batting average of .266 is the top mark in the GNAC.
 

The emergence of an unlikely ace in Cole Calnon and the addition of Division I University of Utah transfer Ernesto Lugo-Canchola have been the glue of the Nighthawks’ staff thus far in 2025. Calnon, who posted a pedestrian 4.74 ERA with 13 strikeouts in 24 2/3 innings pitched in 2024, has suddenly put his name in the conversation for GNAC Pitcher of the Year. He is 7-0 in eight starts, logging six complete games, two shutouts and 40 strikeouts in 56 1/3 innings pitched. His 1.28 ERA leads the GNAC and ranks ninth in Division II baseball, and he has twice earned GNAC Pitcher of the Week honors. “We brought him in from junior college to be a two-way guy,” Schaefer said on Calnon, who arrived at NNU in time for the 2024 season after playing two seasons at Lane Community College. “We expected him to pitch last year, but it just didn’t work out. Part of that is we were confident in who we had on the mound, so we didn’t push the issue too hard. This year he fell into the starting role out of necessity, and we needed him to step up. He has taken the reigns, and he will be in this spot for the foreseeable future. He went and pitched over the summer, and the breaking ball and velocity got a little bit better. He is feeling healthy right now, and that helps a lot too.”
 
Lugo-Canchola meanwhile ranks second in the GNAC (19th nationally) with a 1.85 ERA as he has put up similarly impressive numbers. The left-hander

is also an unblemished 7-0 on the campaign, with a GNAC-leading 62 strikeouts in 48 2/3 innings, a conference-best opponents’ batting average of .156 and a WHIP of 0.97. “He’s got some of the best stuff of anybody in the league, and he is tough to hit,” Schaefer said of the senior. “He isn’t extremely overpowering in terms of velocity, but he just competes. He’s gritty. He’s got about as good of stuff of anyone I’ve had since I’ve been here at NNU.”
 
The Nighthawks have an impressive offensive resume as well, leading the GNAC in home runs (28) and RBIs (224) while holding a team slash line of .309/.390/.455. The Nighthawks wreak havoc on the basepaths with 69 stolen bases – more than twice as many as the next-closest GNAC team (Saint Martin’s, 28). Defensively, NNU leads the conference with a team fielding percentage of .968, has turned 25 double plays and has allowed a conference-low 21 stolen bases. Kaleb Karpstein – a second-team all-GNAC selection as a freshman in 2023 – has led the way with a slash line of .388/.466/.531, 21 RBIs and a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage in 216 chances at first base. “He had a really good freshman campaign, but he sputtered a little last year,” Schaefer said on the junior. “Coming into this year we were hoping he would rebound, and he has done that. He puts together really competitive at-bats, and he has moved up to hitting in the three hole for us because we know what we are going to get out of every at-bat. One thing he does well that gets overlooked is he is an awesome defender at first base. A big part of us leading the conference in defense is him picking us up.”
 
Adrian Arechiga has a GNAC-best 15 stolen bases in 17 attempts, while Nin Burns II (12) and Gavin Brubaker (10) have also reached double digits in steals. Bryan Rojas is hitting .381 with a team-best 13 doubles, while Burns leads NNU with five home runs to go along with a .353 batting average and 30 RBIs. “Offensively we are starting to find our identity,” said Schaefer. “We have done a much better job in two-strike counts. We have been active all season on the bases, and guys are starting to put more balls in play while guys are in motion. We have had more success with runners in scoring position, and that has helped us score a lot more runs last few weeks.”
 
The offensive numbers of late back up Schaefer’s claim. Since the winning streak began a month ago, the Nighthawks are batting .418 with runners in scoring position, have had their batters successfully advance runners in 54.2% of plate appearances and are converting runs 67.4% of the time with a runner on third and less than two outs. By comparison through the team’s first 25 games of the season those figures sat at .290 with runners in scoring position, 47.6% advancing runners and 61.0% with runners on third and less than two outs. All were respectable figures as NNU played its way to a record of 25-10 to start the season; now the team has taken it to a different level at the plate, which showed in the series win over the Wolves.
 

Northwest Nazarene Baseball – Situational Offensive Stats Comparison
Category	First 25 Games	Last 12 Games	Difference
Avg. w/RISP	.290	.418	+.128
Runner on 3, LT 2 out Conv.	61.0%	67.4%	+6.4%
Success Advancing Runners	47.6%	54.2%	+6.6%

 
NNU plated two runs in the first inning of the series, but had to overcome a late deficit as it trailed 4-3 at the seventh-inning stretch. Carter Walsh delivered a two-run home run in the bottom of the seventh, and NNU plated four runs in the bottom of the eighth to secure a series-opening 9-4 triumph. The Nighthawks repeated the early offensive success with two runs in the bottom of the first in the nightcap on Friday, this time scoring all nine of their runs in the first four innings on the way to a 9-2 win.
 
It was Western Oregon that struck first in each game of Saturday’s doubleheader, but both times the Nighthawks responded immediately to take control. NNU met WOU’s two-run top of the first by equaling the score on a two-run triple by Arechiga in game three of the series, before a three-run homer by Calnon in the bottom of the eighth cemented an 8-2 win. Each team scored in the first inning of the finale, but the Nighthawks backed it up with three more runs across the first three innings to keep the lead. A Karpstein three-run homer in the bottom of the sixth proved to be the final blow as the Nighthawks claimed a 7-2 win to sweep the series.
 
It marked the first time since the teams joined the conference as founding members that the Nighthawks swept the Wolves in a four-game conference series. The success had just as much to do with performances on the mound as it did at the plate, as NNU’s staff held the Wolves to an average of 2.5 runs per game on the weekend. Evidence of the pitching staff working in tandem with the offense was the team’s percentage of shutdown innings (allowing zero runs in the half inning directly following run(s) scored by a team’s offense). Among the 16 different innings in which NNU scored runs last week, the pitching staff delivered 13 shutdown innings – a conversion rate of 81.3%.
 
“Every game was fairly similar,” Schaefer said on his team’s most recent series. “We have been able to continue to put pressure on the other team offensively, whether that is putting together a big inning or continuing to score. A big thing for us has been continuing to extend leads. Part of that is offensive, but part of that is your pitching staff putting zeroes on the board after you score. We did a really good job of that this weekend.”
 
Based on Schaefer’s track record at the helm of the program, the Nighthawks’ current historic run of success isn’t all that much of an anomaly. Since taking over in 2019 Schaefer holds an overall record of 186-118-1 (.611) including a conference mark of 125-58 (.683). He led NNU to GNAC regular-season titles in 2021, 2022 and 2023, making the NCAA regional championships each time and advancing to the 2021 Division II College World Series.
 
As the Nighthawks hunt their fourth conference regular-season title, they’ll prepare for a momentous road series at second-place Montana State Billings (22-10, 13-3) this weekend in the Magic City. The Yellowjackets were the last team to beat the Nighthawks on March 8, as the two title contenders split their first four-game series of the season played in Nampa. Doubleheaders are set for Friday at 1 p.m. (MT) and Saturday at noon (MT) at Dehler Park, with live video available online here and live statistics available online here.

 
Fans of the conference and of baseball in general should care about the Nighthawks’ current winning streak – it’s an opportunity to witness what GNAC history has proven to be about a once-per-decade occurrence unfold.
 
Schaefer and the Nighthawks aren’t worried about perfection however, nor are they concerned with breaking the streak record. If that’s where their focus had been over the last month, it’s unlikely the current 12-game winning streak would have ever come to be in the first place. Instead, the Nighthawks have their sights set on the only thing that truly matters within the scope of their 2025 title hunt – Friday’s series opener against the Yellowjackets.
 
“The motivation is already there, and they know what is in front of them,” Schaefer said on his team’s approach to this weekend’s series. “As far as preparation for this week, the energy should be great. For us it is just trying to stay focused on the day, whether it’s practice today or tomorrow. We just want to attack the day and try to get better. As we roll into the weekend, we are going to try to keep executing on the mound and competing in the box. We are going up against a good team, and it’s going to be fun.”