North Duplin thwarts Princeton in Carolina 1A softball

By Rudy Coggins
Published in Sports on April 6, 2016 1:48 PM

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rcoggins@newsargus.com

PRINCETON -- Never believe what you read on paper.

Especially statistics.

Tuesday's early-season matchup between defending state 1-A softball champion North Duplin and Princeton should have -- by all means -- been a pitching duel. Each team entered the Carolina 1-A Conference affair with a microscopic earned run average (ERA) by its respective pitching staff.

Not to mention, the two teams had combined for five no-hitters.

But this meeting, instead, turned into an offensive affair punctuated by out-of-the-park shots, sharply-hit balls down the lines and costly errors that extended innings.

Once relief pitcher Rylee Pate recorded the game-ending strikeout, the once-beaten Rebels walked away with a 7-6 victory on bitterly cold April evening. Somewhere, somebody surely circled the next meeting on their calendar -- Thursday, April 28 in Calypso.

"I thought it was a mighty good ballgame. We were just fortunate at the end to pull it out," second-year ND head coach Ricky Edwards said. "I thought we hit the ball extremely well and I thought Princeton hit the ball, too. (We were) just fortunate to get a win tonight."

The Rebels and Bulldogs combined for 20 hits, seven unearned runs and six errors. But those stats hardly seemed probable since Princeton right-hander Hailey Wood holds the top spot with the league's lowest ERA -- 0.32 -- and ND's Haley Brogden is third with a 0.74 ERA.

Each hurler mixed her speeds and pitches, worked the corners and attempted to jam the batters. Nothing seemed to effectively work -- at least for the first four innings.

Princeton took a 2-0 lead in the second inning on Emily Ricks' center-field blast that left so quickly it needed a stewardess. North Duplin answered when Haley Thurston reached on an infield bunt error, scored on a double and Pate cleared the bases with a two-run shot.

Rebels 3, Bulldogs 2.

"I thought that was a real big part of the game, I thought," Edwards said.

North Duplin added three more in the fourth inning. Consecutive infield errors, Pate's RBI double and Shaily McCarty's two-RBI single pushed the advantage to 6-2.

"Errors killed us ... take some of those errors away and we win the ballgame, I think," said PHS head coach Terry Braswell, whose team allowed three earned runs. "We hit the ball fairly well in spells, but we need to hit the ball better."

Princeton (5-1 overall, 2-1 CC) closed the gap to 7-6 in the bottom of the sixth. North Duplin committed three straight infield errors and Braswell connected on her second extra-base hit -- an RBI double into the power alley.

Pate took over for Brogden inside the circle and retired all four batters she faced to keep North Duplin (9-1) unbeaten in four league outings this season. It was Pate's second save of the season.