HS Baseball: Big innings send Shady Spring past PikeView

Gardner - The PikeView error to open the game against Shady Spring Saturday afternoon appeared to be innocent in nature.

The Tigers made its regional rival pay dearly for the mistake.

The extra out opened the door for the visitors to grab the early momentum, leading to an 18-10 victory in the key regional clash.

The win by Shady Spring moved its win streak to seven straight games.

"That is the thing I have stressed to my guys about high school baseball," first year Shady Spring head coach Kendrick Epling said. "If you don't make errors, make timely hitting, throw strikes and don't walk anybody, you win a lot of ball games. We try to take advantage of every opportunity that we can, if their is a walk or an error, or something like that."

"Most of the time if their is walk or an error, there is always a double or something that happens," Epling went on to say. "The baseball gods know (teams) are going take advantage of your mistakes. We took advantage of the error. Kayden was able to pull through and hit a grand slam that put the momentum in our favor."

Shady Spring lead-off hitter Jaylon Bailey was the benefactor of the initial error to reach base, but it wasn't the only mistake early by the home team.

When a pick-off attempt could not be handled at first base, Bailey moved up to third base and scored on a sacrifice fly from Aiden Calvert.

The game then went from bad to worse for the Panthers.

Sam Barnett reach on a one-out single ahead of Brody Seabolt who drew a walk. Noah Fox was hit by a pitch, loading the bases for Bluefield College commit Kayden Quesenberry.

"I had been slumped a little bit, but I am on like a five-game hit streak right now," Quesenberry said. "I went up there looking for a first pitch fastball. I knew the kid threw like low 80's. I was looking to crush a first pitch fastball and I did."

Quesenberry's staked Shady Spring to a 5-0 lead and the Tigers never trailed the rest of the way.

Kayden Quesenberry

"We are just not making plays right now. We are definitely a team, this entire week, that has been meek," PikeView head coach Josh Wyatt said. "We are not moving. We are not moving when balls aren't hit to us. We are not backing up stuff. We are not in position. Therefore, we are playing flat-footed."

Entering the week with a huge chance to put itself in the postseason driver's seat, PikeView dropped all four games against AAA Region 3 opponents, Independence, Greenbrier East, Sissonville and Shady Spring.

"Right now, the only time we are happy is when something happens for us," Wyatt lamented. "We talked to them at the beginning of the year about failure and we have had it this week. That is a big flaw for us right now, growing up, getting past failure and being able to perform after that. We are failing at that."

A solo blast from Landon Wyatt to open the PikeView at-bat pulled the Panthers within four run, but the home team never moved any closer the remainder of the game.

Landon Wyatt

Shady Spring took an 11-4 lead after five innings as a result of a two-run home run from Jacob Claypool, the first of his high school career.

Trailing by eight runs entering the bottom of the sixth inning, the Panthers cut the deficit in half in hopes of a comeback.

A double from Landon Bolen scored the first run before Drew Damewood singled home two more. After a sacrifice fly from Wyatt, PikeView only trailed 12-8 with one inning to play.

However, Shady destroyed all hope of a comeback with a six-run explosion, aided by two more PikeView errors. The uprising included a two-RBI single from Cutter Boggs which extended his hit streak to 17 games.

Cutter Boggs

The bulk of the damage for the Tigers Saturday came from the lower portion of the batting order. Quesenberry, Claypool and Colyn Smith combined for five hits in nine at-bats and drove in eight runs.

"Our bottom of the line-up was the MVP of the show today. If you can have the bottom of the line-up swing like that, you are going to win a lot of ball games," Epling said. "Props to PikeView too because they were able to swing it as well. We were just able to keep up and keep swinging. I am proud of the guys and how we came out and competed. I felt like we played from the first to the seventh (inning) and finished the game."

Colyn Smith