When the varsity baseball team’s home game against Pisgah was cancelled on March 26 because of rain, the players did not shrug their shoulders and head home.
Instead, the crack of bats could be heard in the cages two hours after school to get ready to take on the undefeated Pisgah Bears, the top 3A ranked team in the state, the following day.
The team’s hard work paid off.
The Falcons handed the talented Bears their first loss of the season, winning 8-6, and moving to an overall record of 5-7 and a WNC Athletic Conference record of 3-3.
“It was a heck of a day,” junior outfielder Kail Ring said. “It was the first time we played as a team all season.”
Strong hitting contributed to the victory as the team saw its best day at the plate all season.
Junior Scott Tippett went 3-4 with three runs batted in, including one hit that was only a few feet short of a home run. Tippett went into the game in the two hitter spot with a .333 average. He led the team in RBI’s.
Senior Jake Ryan went 2-3 with two doubles.
“It was pretty cool to be able to hit that well against such a talented team,” Tippett said. “As a team we were killing the ball, and that ended up being the difference-maker.”
While pitching, senior Grant Anderson was an ace on the mound. The Kings College signee pitched three scoreless innings, only allowing two hits and one walk. The team committed one error in the field and held the Bears to its second-lowest scoring game at that point in the season.
Earlier that year, Pisgah had defeated Owen, 21-0.
“Defensively, we played our best game all year by far,” senior shortstop Hunter Hall said. “We really needed to be ‘shut down’ in the field because they are such a good offensive team.”
The Falcons went into the Pisgah game on a four-game losing streak.
“We had a ton of team focus,” Head Coach Brandon Ball said. “We had a will to win as opposed to a will to not lose.”
“We knew we couldn’t live on our win over Pisgah,” Ring said. “There was still a whole season to play. We had to be focused on making it to the postseason.”
Going into the last four games, the team was 7-10 overall, 5-5 in conference play.
On April 29, the team made the trip to Haywood County to take on the Bears again. The game ended in a controversy.
In the bottom of the seventh inning, the Falcons held a 3-2 lead. Pisgah outfielder Mason Fox came up with two outs and a runner on third. Fox sent a line drive into the outfield that scored infielder Bryce Burgess. But before he crossed home, in celebration, he took off his helmet and tossed it to the dugout. NCHSAA rules say that if a player takes his helmet off in the base path, he is called out, ending the game at 3-2.
By Jackson Whiting
