While most students use their week of Spring Break to travel home, visit friends around the world, or party it up in Europe or the Caribbean, Swarthmore’s spring athletes are never afforded this luxury. With the spring season in full swing by mid-March, teams take the break as an opportunity to compete without the usual stress of homework, classes, and other responsibilities that inevitably arise during classes. Some stay on campus while others head south in search of warmer weather and different competition. Swarthmore baseball fell into the latter category. As a member of the team, I thought I’d take you through the week to give a better sense of what Spring Break looks like for those athletes who don’t get to go home.
The week started early on Friday morning, March 6, as our bus left the Fieldhouse parking lot at 7 a.m. This was the beginning of the twelve-hour driving journey down to our hotel in Lexington, SC, a sparse suburb of the state capital, Columbia. The drive was marked by endless rounds of the team’s favorite pastime, Mafia, where players either try to stay alive or “kill” others, depending on their secret roles. Stops for lunch and dinner allowed us to leave the cramped bus to stretch our legs and fuel for the upcoming competition. At the players’ request, this year’s dinner was at Buc-ee’s, a staple Southern gas station brand known for its iconic Buc-ee the Beaver mascot and impeccably clean bathrooms.
After we eventually arrived in Lexington, the team quickly got some much-needed rest ahead of the double-header we had the next day against the No. 16-ranked program, Case Western Reserve University. This game was just the beginning of our competition — the week ahead held seven more games in six days. Two of the games would be against Marietta College, one of the most successful programs in Division III men’s baseball history, decorated with six national championships.
Fortunately, despite the grueling travel we faced, the team defeated Case Western in two of our three matchups, taking the series. Both wins came on walk-off hits from Leor Kedar ’28 and Aidan Sullivan ’26, respectively. These two players would go on to have historic weeks. The team capitalized on the momentum and swept the rest of the week, taking both games from Marietta and ending the break with a record of 6-1. This success came off the back of stand-out performances from David Herrin ’28 — earning him Centennial Conference Pitcher of the Week — Steven Jungers ’26, Alessandro Propper-Bowring ’29, and Kedar, along with plenty of others that I do not have the room to name.
As mentioned before, Sullivan had a memorable week, with a ball leaving the yard against Marietta, earning him the program record in career home runs. Kedar wrote his name in the history book that Thursday, hitting four home runs in a single game against SUNY Cobleskill, a feat never before achieved by a Centennial baseball player. That historic day capped off a week where Kedar hit six home runs and reached base five times across multiple games. This dominant performance would eventually earn him the D3 National Player of the Week title on March 18.
These great performances and consistent wins kept morale high at the nightly team dinners. Most nights, the games would finish after dark, leaving the team very little time to make our reservations. So, the 35 of us would stumble chaotically onto the bus, rush into the hotel to shower and put on street clothes, and be back on the bus within ten minutes and off to the restaurant. This was the routine until our final day, Thursday, when we showered at the field, immediately piled onto the bus, and began our journey back to Swarthmore. Even with only one quick stop for dinner (which we ate on the bus), we only managed to arrive at 4:30 a.m., creating a fitting end to a fun, chaotic, and even highly successful Spring Break of 2026.
