The Loyola Marymount University Lions baseball team (1-0, 0-0 WCC) got ahead early against the Washington Huskies and never looked back giving head coach Nathan Choate his first victory of the season 7-1.
 
Josh Agnew (1-0) drew the Friday night start and gave Choate 5.2 innings of solid work on the bump. The senior picked up his 12th win as a Lion and was in command throughout the evening. He scattered six hits, against 24 Washington batters only surrendering one run in his home debut.
 
The Lions got on the board in the bottom half of the first when Trevin Esquerra sent a David Rhodes offering over the right field wall for his first homerun of the season. Esquerra looks to be in midseason form and is picking up right where he left off when he paced the Lions with 16 homeruns last year.
 
With LMU up by a pair they were able to push across three more runs in the bottom of the third, when again off the bat of Esquerra, brought in the speedy Dylan Hirsch who got on with a walk earlier in the inning. Cooper Uhl added to the Lions total when he sent a shot to left field brining in Kenny Oyama and Esquerra pushing the Lions ahead 5-0. 
 
Agnew was cruising until he ran into trouble in the top half of the sixth. After getting the first batter out he gave up a pair of singles and a walk which prompted Choate to go to his bullpen and peg Matt Voelker to get out of the jam. Voelker was up to the task and was able to limit the Huskies to one run in their half of the sixth.
 
The Lions increased their lead by getting runs in the bottom of the sixth and seventh and Voelker was strong in relief closing the door on the Huskies and sending the crowd at Page home happy.
 
LMU and the Huskies return to the diamond tomorrow night for the second game of the three-game set with first pitch slated for 6:00 p.m.