By: Evan O'Kelly, Associate Commissioner for Communications

PORTLAND, Ore. – Any way you look at it, the 2025 campaign was a historical one for the Northwest Nazarene baseball team.
 
One win away from the NCAA Division II World Series finals. The most wins by any Great Northwest Athletic Conference team since the league was founded in 2001-02. Its second straight GNAC regular-season and conference tournament trophies.
 
At the heart of it all was ace Ernesto Lugo-Canchola, who, after delivering by some measures the best-pitched season in conference history, was announced on Tuesday as the 2024-25 GNAC Male Athlete of the Year. He is the first student-athlete – male or female – in Northwest Nazarene history to earn the conference’s top annual award, as voted on by GNAC athletic directors.
 
There is no way to describe the left-handed transfer from the University of Utah other than dominant from his first outing on Jan. 31 onward, as he baffled conference opponents, NCAA playoff foes and helped lead his team to the deepest postseason baseball run the conference has ever seen.
 
In a baseball era mired in complex statistics and deep analytics, Lugo-Canchola’s masterpiece of a season was a friendly reminder that sometimes the equation for greatness is much simpler than it seems. He was a perfect 13-0 in 16 starts this spring, winning more games than any pitcher in GNAC history. He bested the Western Oregon duo of Nick Waechter and Grady Wood, who went 12-0 in 2006 and 2012, respectively, and it was the second-most wins by any Division II pitcher this season.
 
In 94 2/3 innings pitched, Lugo-Canchola ranked fifth in Division II with a 2.00 earned run average and 12th nationally with 103 strikeouts – third-most in GNAC single-season history. His 5.04 hits allowed per nine innings were third in Division II – the opposition hitting just .164 against him in 2025. He shattered both of those GNAC single-season records, with the previous marks being 5.91 hits allowed per nine innings and an opponents’ batting average of .184 – both set by WOU’s Wood in 2012.
 
Most importantly, Northwest Nazarene won 14 of the 16 games that the 6-foot-5 ace pitched in, as he contributed heavily to the Nighthawks’ GNAC-record 46 wins and overall record of 46-16. That bested Western Oregon’s mark of 42 wins during the 2005 campaign.
 
Lugo-Canchola won each of his final five starts of the season, with the final four coming in the playoffs. He kicked things off with a brilliant two-hit shutout against Montana State Billings at the GNAC Championships, striking out eight and going all nine innings on his way to being named tournament MVP. In a rematch against the Yellowjackets at the NCAA West Region Championships in Nampa a week later, Lugo-Canchola won again as he limited MSUB to a pair of runs in five innings in a 10-6 NNU triumph.
 
With a trip to the World Series on the line in the NCAA Super Regional – also played in Nampa – Lugo-Canchola got the nod in the opening game against No. 19 Cal State Monterey Bay. In seven shutout innings, the lefty struck out five and surrendered just two hits as the Nighthawks stormed to a 14-0 win before beating the Otters in the next game to punch their ticket to Cary, N.C.
 
The USA Baseball National Training Complex did not prove too big a stage for Lugo-Canchola, nor did an opening-round matchup against top-ranked reigning Division II national champion University of Tampa. In what proved to be his final outing for the Nighthawks, Lugo-Canchola limited the Spartans to two runs on three hits in 6 1/3 innings of work, while striking out seven. And once again, NNU won.
 
On the biggest stage, in the most important games in program history, Lugo-Canchola was at his very best. Across 27 1/3 innings pitched in his four postseason starts, he struck out 23 while posting an ERA of 1.32, a WHIP of 0.91 and an opponents’ batting average of .112. He was a perfect 4-0, averaged 103.5 pitches and 6.8 innings per outing and allowed just four total runs on 10 total hits.
 

Ernesto Lugo-Canchola - 2025 Playoff Game Log
Date	Opponent	IP	H	R	ER	BB	K	AB	PIT	W	L	ERA	WHIP	AVG
5-7	MSU Billings	9	2	0	0	2	8	28	100	1	0	0.00	0.44	.071
5-16	MSU Billings	5	3	2	2	3	3	18	93	1	0	3.60	1.20	.167
5-22	#19 CSU Monterey Bay	7	2	0	0	5	5	21	111	1	0	0.00	1.00	.095
6-2	#1 Tampa	6.2	3	2	2	5	7	22	110	1	0	2.84	1.26	.136
POSTSEASON TOTALS		27.2	10	4	4	15	23	89	414	4	0	1.32	0.91	.112

 
Lugo-Canchola allowed more than three hits just four times in his 16 outings in 2025, while striking out five or more in 15 of 16 starts. His 16 starts tied a GNAC record that is jointly held by NNU’s Roger Evenson (116 in 2005) and WOU’s Mike Eisenhauer (2008). He became the fourth man in GNAC history to top the century mark in strikeouts in a season, joining Evenson (2005), Montana State Billings’ Cody Cooper (106 in 2016) and WOU’s Waechter (102 in 2005).
 
The recipe for NNU’s World Series run had a lot to do with tandem ace Cole Calnon, who had a perfect 12-0 record of his own while carrying a 2.27 ERA and striking out 72 hitters in 111 innings pitched. When it came time for all-conference nominations, NNU head coach Joe Schaefer had an impossible decision to make in which ace to nominate for GNAC Pitcher of the Year. Calnon, who at the time had a 1.78 ERA upon the completion of the league schedule, got the nod while Lugo-Canchola was voted the GNAC Newcomer of the Year and was a unanimous first-team all-conference selection.
 
Lugo-Canchola’s postseason performance was so dominant however that it propelled him to consensus first-team all-region from the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association, American Baseball Coaches Association and D2 Conference Commissioners Association. He was then named an NCBWA first-team All-American and a second-team All-American by both the D2 CCA and ABCA. The deserved postseason awards were capped off by a national pitcher of the year honor announced by D2 Baseball last week.
 
He is the sixth player and first Nighthawk since the GNAC was formed to earn first-team All-America recognition, and it marks the first time since the 2012 campaign that the league has had a player on the top national award list.
 
Lugo-Canchola became the third baseball player in GNAC history to claim the conference’s top award, joining 2014-15 winner Brody Miller of Montana State Billings and 2011-12 winner Wood of Western Oregon. The GNAC Athlete of the Year award is presented annually to one male and one female deemed to have achieved the highest performance athletically. The female winner will be announced on Thursday.
 
2025 GNAC Athlete of the Year Awards
GNAC Male Scholar Athlete of the Year – Laurenz Waldbauer, NNU, Track & Field
GNAC Female Scholar Athlete of the Year – Kendall Kramer, UAF, Cross Country
GNAC Male Athlete of the Year – Ernesto Lugo-Canchola, NNU, Baseball
GNAC Female Athlete of the Year – TBA June 26, 2025