For the first six innings, it was all Orange County. Looking for their first win of the year, the Hornets seemed well on their way heading into the seventh inning up by five runs, when suddenly, Western Albemarle came to life. The Warriors negated their first six quiet innings on offense by tying the game with their backs against the wall. But Orange wound up with a fitting end as Rahiem Cooper was able to bounce back from an error in the top of the seventh to reach base, motor around, and get home on a sacrifice fly in the bottom half of the inning to score the game winning run and wrap up a 6-5 victory for his team.
“When you’re a young and inexperienced ball team like we are, you’re going to have the kind of hiccups we did in the seventh,” said first year Hornets coach Brian Rasnick. “Western battled and gave us a fight and our kids had to two options — back down or step up to the challenge. Our two, three and four hitters stepped up and got the job done. They found a way, and that’s what we’re preaching to them. I don’t care if it’s pretty so long as they find the way.”
While Western had nine base runners in the first six innings, the Warriors only had one hit — a single from Scott Wakely in the third inning — and no runs to show for it.
“If we’re going to have a bad start, it needs to be because someone made us do it and not where we’re co-conspirators,” said Western coach Skip Hudgins. “We’re not a good enough team offensively to overcome the errors. That’s where we are.”
Hudgins’ team came awfully close to pulling off a coup d’état in the seventh inning. After getting a leadoff runner for the third straight inning when Wakely was hit by a pitch, the Warriors put together the game tying rally. Ryan McCrimmon then singled and was followed by Logan Ebanks who put Western on the board with an RBI single. After a walk, another RBI single and another walk that brought home Ebanks, the Orange lead was down to two runs. Mitchell Parks provided the next two runs when he sent a ground ball to Cooper at shortstop, who overthrew first base.
“I’ve coached Rahiem since he was an eighth grader and I have no problem saying that he’s one of the most athletic baseball players around,” Rasnick said. “But he’s struggling right now. We have all the confidence in the world in him and this was the first time I can remember where he looked shaken from a mistake. To see him bounce back and score that game winning run was great. Hopefully that’s something he can build on, he has all the potential in the world.”
Fittingly, Cooper immediately got a chance to redeem his fielding mistake. Cooper led off the bottom of the seventh by reaching first on an error. He then stole second base. David Dulin sent Cooper to third when he came up with a single. And in the very next at bat, Zak Reininger put a bow on the game for Orange with his sacrifice fly.
“This is our first district win, and hopefully we’ll be able to get more now that we’ve got this one,” Cooper said. “Our pitching was struggling in the first couple of games, but has really come around. It looks like we’re getting it together on offense, so we should be able to continue to win games.”
Freshman starting pitcher Antonio Murphy threw five shutout innings for Orange and struck out four batters and gave up only one hit.
“’Big Tone’ is what we call him,” Rasnick said. “He’s only been on varisty for a week and a half and one thing he’s brought is energy. He’s got all his teammates believing in him. Yesterday he said he wanted the ball. Today, he took the ball and pounded the strike zone and was very aggressive which is exactly what we want in our pitchers. For a freshman to step up and have a big game against a great program like Western, we are thrilled to have him in Orange and Blue, that’s for sure.”
Orange took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second when Brandon Twigg came up with an RBI single. In the fourth, the Hornets tacked on two more runs thanks to a 2-run double from Mitchell King. Orange scored twice more again in the fifth, this time on a 2-run single from Tyler Seal.
The Hornets (1-3) travel to Chancellor today at 5 p.m.
Western (1-5) heads to Goochland on Friday at 6 p.m.
