It might have been a challenge for Winston Academy to get on the baseball diamond in recent weeks but they sure took advantage of the week that they had to play ball.
With four games on the docket, WA went through the ringer in week one of the schedule taking on two MHSAA schools and Newton County Academy in a span of four days. When the dust settled, they had four wins to start the season unblemished.
“I was really proud of my guys. My kids fight, they really play hard. They have no quit in them,” first year head coach Charlie Smith said. “I couldn’t be more pleased for them to be 4-0. One of our kids said that he has never been on a team that’s been 4-0 and that’s pretty special.”
It helped the Patriots that they had that home field advantage getting a chance to play all of them in Louisville, but the task was tall either way. They had Class 2A Eupora to start things off and WA threw five pitchers, allowing just three hits in a 5-1 victory.
Bryce Waggoner led the way with 1.2 innings, one hit and two strikeouts in the victory. They also got some key runs to break the game open in the fourth inning when they scored four runs to go up 5-0 in the game. Eupora got its lone run in the seventh inning but it was too late.
“We were a little nervous opening night. We didn’t throw enough strikes but we threw ones we had to throw. We made big pitches to get outs,” Smith said. “We made a couple of errors late in the ball game and couldn’t put a shut out up, but other than that I was really pleased to get a win over a traditionally good 2A school.”
The bats began to heat up a bit as the week went on starting with a ball game against Newton County Academy. The Patriots came out with seven runs in the first inning and five in the second for a commanding 12-5 lead. NCA got to within 13-7 before the Pats blew it open in the fifth with five runs for the 18-8 win.
Jody McCorkle and Josh Mcginnis each had three-hit games with three RBI each and Waggoner had four RBI on two hits. They pieced together the pitching again as well as six different pitchers hit the mound.
Smith has coached a lot of baseball over the years but he even admits that Friday night’s game was a head scratcher. The Patriots hosted Leake Central from Class 4A in the MHSAA and the two teams encountered a slugfest that ended with the Patriots holding on to a 21-19 win.
WA scored 10 runs in the first inning to jump out on the Gators but they fought back to cut it to 10-5 in the second. Leading 14-5, WA gave up six, three and five runs in the last three innings but held Leake Central off of the scoreboard in the seventh.
Winston had 15 hits in the game led by Hunter Gregory and Mcginnis’ three hits. Mcginnis had a team-high four RBI.
“Out of 34 years I haven’t been involved in something quite like that with Leake Central,” Smith said. “We scored 10 runs in the first inning and then turned around and they banged a couple off the fence to cut the lead in half. We added back and forth all night long. What it did for us is make us have to fight. We played a ball club with tremendous speed and that will help us play in pressure situations.”
After all of that, WA had to face French Camp Academy on Saturday morning. It was something that Smith said worried him from a standpoint of physical health and mentality.
They answered back in a big way with a three-run sixth inning that took a 5-4 deficit and turned it into a 7-5 victory.
“You turn around and play 2 p.m. on Saturday against two really good high school pitchers at French Camp,” Smith said. “I knew that we would be tired but we had to see what kind of gut check we had. We found ourselves in a sure enough war.”
The Patriots had just five hits in the game but found a way to win. Gregory threw 3.0 innings on the mound with two hits and three runs surrendered, walking three batters and striking out four. He also had a hit and an RBI at the plate. Now that the Patriots have jumped out to a hot start, the challenge is keeping it rolling. They have a little more rest on tap this week as they play just two games traveling to East Rankin Academy on Thursday for a 6 p.m. game and follow that up with a home game against Central Holmes Christian on Fri at 6.
