With the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference tournament approaching, the Wheaton baseball team has hit form at the right time, winning six of its last seven regular season games thanks in part to Hendricken product AJ Guindon.

Reaching base safely in five of the contests, the ex-Hawk racked up three hits against Roger Williams on April 28 and UMass-Dartmouth four days later, driving home three runs against the former in an 8-5 Lyon victory.

In addition to his exploits at the dish, Guindon crossed home plate himself twice due to miscues from the RWU pitching staff, getting Wheaton on the board in the first courtesy of a balk before taking advantage of a passed ball in the eighth inning.

The Lyons’ late-season push has coincided with Guindon’s batting average sailing over the .300 mark, reaching that plateau by picking up a hit in each game of Sunday’s doubleheader versus Nichols, which ended with Wheaton claiming both contests.

Game one concluded as a 6-0 Lyons’ blanking, but the nightcap needed extra innings to determine a victor, as Bison pitcher Jaden Mwangi plunked Shawn Cali in the tenth to bring home Guindon as the eventual winning run in a 4-3 Wheaton decision.

Seeded fourth in the six-team NEWMAC tournament field, Wheaton begins play on Tuesday against Worcester Polytechnic Institute with the winner advancing to a Friday face-off with regular season champions Salve Regina.

It will be a stiff challenge for the Lyons to qualify for the Division III NCAA tournament for the fourth straight year, falling in game three of their super regional series versus Johns Hopkins last spring to just miss out on advancing to the College World Series.

Heading into Wheaton’s do-or-die tilt versus the Engineers, Guindon is batting at a .301 clip with ten extra-base hits and 21 runs batted in, five off Kevin Matos’s team lead as one of a handful of Lyons to produce at least 20 runs during the campaign.

The 2024 softball season for the Maine softball team was one best forgotten as the Black Bears could only eke out a 4-39 record, but Pilgrim alumna Caitlyn Fallon did her best to stand out amid the struggle as one of her team’s most versatile players.

Pitching in a team-high 23 games, the former Patriot spent 72.2 innings inside the circle and struck out 34 opposing batters, also earning credit for the victory in an 11-10 upending of Holy Cross on April 25.

Coming on in relief of starter Kaly Thomas after she surrendered seven runs in the first inning, Fallon was able to limit further damage while also contributing at the plate, going 2-for-3 with a pair of runs scored, one of which came during an eight-run third frame.

On non-pitching days, she could be found inside the Black Bears’ batting order as the designated player, averaging .294 with 11 runs batted in and two home runs, clubbing a grand slam on April 20 against Maryland-Baltimore County.

Facing the Retrievers’ Isabella DiGiandomenico with one out in the bottom of the sixth, Fallon connected and took her over the fence to clear the bases, but it wasn’t enough to prevent Maine from being on the receiving end of an 8-7 defeat from the UMBC nine.

Saturday marked the end of the Black Bears’ campaign as they were shut out 6-0 by Albany, capping off a three-game set in which they failed to score a single run and were held to no more than four hits in any of the contests.