The James River baseball team will play three games in four days this week, including two Three Rivers District matchups. River was scheduled to play at Floyd County Tuesday, at Waynesboro Thursday and home against Alleghany this Friday.
The Knights dropped below .500 for the first time this season when they lost two games last week, a heartbreaker and a slugfest. They dropped a 4-3 decision at home against Patrick County and a 17-9 game in Roanoke against Class 5 Patrick Henry.
“Although we lost this was just a great game to be a part of,” said River coach Chance Henry of the loss to Patrick County. “The reason we lost was experience in close games. Patrick has a solid team and knows how to fight back. We played a high level of baseball for most of the game and only made a couple of mistakes and they capitalized on them.”
River scored two runs in the first inning then added another in third to lead 3-0. Patrick cut the lead to 3-2 in the sixth, then scored two in the top of the seventh for the deciding runs. Kody Park was the tough-luck loser, allowing three earned runs after pitching five shutout innings.
“Kody continues to be our ace this year and kept Patrick off balance all night,” said Henry.
Jeremiah Mays had three hits and scored twice for River and Hunter Mays had two hits.
Photos by Leigh Downey
“We swung the bats pretty well and missed a couple opportunities but did a fairly good job,” said Henry. “ I was really proud of how we played, we just got beat because of our inexperience in those type of games and the only way to gain it is to play well enough to put ourselves in that position, which we did.”
On Thursday against Patrick Henry there were only two half innings that did not produce a run. River scored four in the first inning and one in the second but trailed 7-5 after two innings. The Patriots scored in every inning and had 14 hits as Cam Saunders took the loss on the mound.
“This was an old-fashioned slugfest,” said Henry. “The score doesn’t indicate how close this game was. We just got out-hit, plain and simple. We swung the bats well, they just swung them better.”
Evan Byers led River with three hits. Byers and both Mays brothers scored two times each and Hunter Weaver knocked in two as the Knights fell to 4-5 on the season.
“We threw strikes for the most part and if a team is going to hit like PH did all we can do is tip our hat,” said Henry. “Really, the only disappointing aspect of the game for us was our defense. Teams can’t win many games with six errors and it’s hard to overcome that.”
