It wasn’t pretty between Charlottesville and William Monroe’s baseball squads Wednesday by any measure. Both teams were missing key players and struggled to pitch well and play solid defense, natural results of each school being on spring break.
In fact, Monroe coach Mike Maynard was pretty emphatic about how poorly the Dragons played — and his squad won 22-9 in five innings over the Black Knights.
“That’s the sloppiest game we’ve ever played since I’ve been at William Monroe,” Maynard said. “I’m happy to get out of here with a (win). We had a good talk after the game—we can’t play like that. But we had some good leadership today, I saw Ryan (Leake) and Jack (Morris) trying to pull them together and we had to fight through some things.”
The Dragons pounded out 22 runs in those five innings with Keegan Woolford falling just a home run short of the cycle in four at bats as he ripped off a 4 for 5 afternoon at the plate that included four runs and five RBI. The Dragons also benefited from a slew of errors or near-miss catches by the Black Knights, who had a number of players playing out of position with three pitchers out of the lineup for Spring break-related reasons.
“It really hurt us with the pitching the past two nights,” said CHS coach Chuck Wood. “It makes it difficult. We’ve just got to put the phases of the game together and once we put it together we should be okay.”
Tyler Trevillian scored four times for the Dragons, drawing a pair of walks as the No. 2 hitter. Jack Morris closed his day with a double and a triple in his final two at bats and scored three times for Monroe.
Charlottesville put together a six-run third inning with Robert Spivey’s triple getting the rally started. The Black Knights then drew three straight walks and Wade Kammauff and Andrew Chambers pounded out a pair of singles to claw back into the game. Kammauff went 3 for 3 at the plate and pulled a stint on the mound for the Black Knights — his first appearance since the junior was a freshman on junior varsity.
Charlottesville will take a short break before jumping back into Jefferson District play with a road game against Fluvanna County Tuesday. Monroe’s week isn’t over yet, and Maynard’s plan to save two of his top pitchers — Jack Morris and Ryan Leake — as well as Austin Batten’s visit to Longwood University Wednesday gives the Dragons a lot of options on the mound in a critical Bull Run clash with Clarke County.
“We got away with that but it was sloppy,” Maynard said. “I’ll have three of my top five pitchers ready for (the Clarke) game.”
