By Jonathan Shelton
The Patrick County boys varsity baseball team started off the playoffs hosting Bassett May 14.
The Cougars showed great defense straight out of the gate, keeping the Bengals at zero in the first inning. First at bat, Parker Brown and William Wood started off hot, getting on base. Evan Hopkins added to that, bringing Parker Brown in for the first Cougar run, followed by Seth Scott hitting the ball just short of the fence to bring Wood home for the second Cougar run.
In the third inning, the umpires made a call that halted the game for a few minutes; the call being that Patrick County’s batter could walk with four balls and one strike. Bassett believed it should have been three balls and two strikes. The umpires’ decision favored the Cougars, and allowed the batter to proceed to first. Using this new-found excitement in a fairly slow game, Colby Vernon kept the fire blazing, scoring Hopkins for the third run and, putting the Cougars ahead 3-0.
In the fourth inning, Brown scored one more run for the Cougars on a Bengals error. Great defense by Patrick County kept Bassett at bay for the rest of the game, as the Cougars waltzed to a 4-0 first round victory.
Dylan Phillips was on the mound for the Cougars, and was nearly untouchable the whole game, allowing only two hits in the seven innings he pitched, while walking one batter and striking out six Bengals.
Hopkins finished the game with one run and one RBI. Brown ended with two runs and Wood with one of his own.
“Do I believe the controversial call affected the game any? Yes, maybe on the flow of the game,” Coach Eric Renegar said. “It gave us momentum. That was based off of Bassett’s reaction, because when you realize something so small gets to those guys so much, then you know you have an edge on them. I know it helped us. Right there, I told our guys ‘control what you can control.’ That was a situation we couldn’t control and it fell our way and we took it and ran with it. I think they responded with it very well.”
“Anytime we strike early against a team that you’ve already beaten twice, it deflates them and takes all of their energy out of them. You’ve got to hit them in the mouth a little bit. That was the key today, playing our game and getting an early lead on them,” Renegar said
We absolutely have momentum going into our next game. At this point, it’s win or go home for us. Our guys, especially our 9 seniors, realize that this may be the last time they roll out there unless they win this next game. Having said that, that is the motivating factor. Beating (Tunstall) the first time we played them and then going up there and letting them beat us? It’s going to make for a tough game. They’re a really good ball team with a really good coach. We’ve got to control the things we do and we have to execute well. We’ve got to take advantage of every chance we get. We’ve got to play a perfect game and these guys realize that,” he said.
Unfortunately, the weather decided to play as a factor in this year’s tournament. Patrick County traveled to Tunstall on Wednesday and playrf through the first two innings, both teams locked at 0-0. However, due to thunder and lightning and the downpour that soon followed, the game was postponed and ultimately cancelled. The district decided to cancel the Piedmont District Tournament and allow the highest seed (Tunstall) to advance to the regional playoffs. Thus, the Patrick County baseball season ended on a bittersweet note. The Cougars finished 14-7 for the season.
