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Western baseball falls in Conference 29 final

Photo courtesy Harrisonburg Daily News-Record

By Josh Walfish / Special to Scrimmage Play

For Western Albemarle’s baseball team, just getting to Friday was the goal.

The Warriors would have loved to win the Conference 29 baseball championship over Turner Ashby in Bridgewater, but the main goal this week was to punch its ticket to the 3A West Region tournament. By accomplishing that Thursday with a win over Spotswood, Western Albemarle coach Skip Hudgins sent out a trio of inexperienced pitchers to face Turner Ashby’s potent lineup.

The lack of innings was evident as the Knights connected for 12 hits in a 10-0 six-inning rout of the Warriors to win the Conference 29 title for the second straight season.

“We accomplished what we wanted to accomplish [Thursday], which is punching our ticket into next week,” Hudgins said. “Obviously, we would have liked to have won tonight, but the big thing that we needed to do, we did.”

It never looked like Turner Ashby (20-2) was going to have the chance to end the game early.

The Knights took a 5-0 lead into the sixth inning with the top of its lineup scheduled to come to the plate. A single and a walk to lead off the frame forced Western Albemarle coach Skip Hudgins to his bullpen, and he brought in Lucas Adams off the bench.

The first batter Adams faced was VMI signee Cody Warner, who launched the first pitch he saw from Adams over the right-field fence for a no-doubt three-run blast. Adams walked the next two batters before an RBI single put the Knights in position to earn the walk-off victory.

“When a new pitcher comes in, they normally start with a fastball, so I was geared up and ready for a fastball,” Warner said. “He threw it where I liked it, so I just hit it.”

The Knights scored in five of the six innings that were played, including five in the final inning to earn the walk-off victory. But the Warriors (15-5) did themselves no help in the field either, committing four errors.

The most costly came in the second inning when shortstop Wyatt Hull misfired on a double-play throw. The toss allowed two runs to score on a groundball that could have gotten Western Albemarle out of the inning.

“We knew tonight we would have to field flawlessly and we’d have to score some runs, and we didn’t do either of those two things,” Hudgins said. “[There was] the ball in left field that we should have caught, the double play we should have turned, if you do those couple of things, it’s 2-0 or 3-0, and it makes it a different type of game.”

In the first five innings, Turner Ashby’s offense was dynamic with four of its nine hits going for extra bases, including a pair of doubles from Jesse Showalter to help start rallies.

The senior hit a line drive off the wall in the gap between left and center fields in the first inning for the Knights’ first hit, and later scored on an RBI single from Ross Detamore. In the fourth, Showalter drove a pitch down the left-field line and advanced to third on a throwing error before scoring on a Warner single.

Detamore finished 3-for-3 with a walk and two RBIs, including a towering solo homer to straightaway center field in the third inning. He said the early offense was an important confidence booster for the Knights.

“We didn’t wait a couple of innings to hit, we hit right off the bat,” Detamore said. “We didn’t swing at bad pitches and hit the pitches that were very hittable.”

The early support was more than enough for James Madison commit Justin Showalter, who allowed three base runners and struck out seven Warriors in four innings of work. He was relieved by junior Waring Garber, who needed just 13 pitches to complete his two perfect innings.

“[Showalter] overmatched some of our kids,”  Hudgins said. “He has a good breaking ball and he throws hard, so it’s one of those things.”

After the game, Hudgins said he wanted to keep his message to the Warriors simple. He said he wanted to stress that next week was a blank slate and to leave any bad feelings in Bridgewater before the start of regional play next week.

“[I told them] to just wipe it off,” Hudgins said. “Once you walk out that gate, we start a new season.”

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