WHITMIRE, S.C. — The Wolverines varsity baseball team opened their season with back-to-back home games and were hoping to avoid back-to-back losses. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen due to two disastorous innings. Whitmire(2-4) fell 15-4 at home to West-Oak(2-0) on Tuesday, March 10th.
Whitmire was hoping to carry their momentum over after splitting games in their preseason tournament against quality opponents, but that did not happen. They loss 11-0 in their home opener on Monday, March 9th and was looking to bounce back on Tuesday evening.
Dalton Williams got the start on the mound for the Wolverines and he had a solid outing, but he had to overcome some early adversity. The first inning was a struggle as he allowed four runs and had trouble with the Warriors lineup. The Wolverines found themselves down 4-0 at the bottom of the first inning.
Whitmire was able to make a small dent in the deficit at the bottom of the first inning. Williams was able to bring home a run with a single. They still trailed 4-1 at the end of the first inning.
West-Oak was able to add another run at the top of the second inning, but Williams began to settle into the game. Whitmire now trailed 5-1 at the end of the second inning. Both teams were scoreless for the third inning, but the Wolverines began to rally back at the bottom of the third inning.
Jaden Clark and Elijah Alexander both had RBI singles to bring two more runs at the bottom of the third inning to cut the Warriors’ lead down to just two runs, 5-3, going into the fourth inning.
Williams had another strong inning on the mound at the top of fifth and was able to retire all three batters that he faced. He then was able to hit a hard ball into the outfield for a double to put himself in scoring position with one out. Brian Steele was able bring a run home and now the Wolverines only trailed by one run, 5-4. Whitmire battled back, but also left some food on their plate. They had two base runners at first and second with two outs in the middle of their rally, but the runner on second base made a mental error and was tagged out in rundown to get their final out of the inning.
Williams reached his limit and Whitmire made a pitching change at the top of the sixth inning. Jacorian Epps took over the mound and the young eighth grader learned a valuable lesson. He battle hard, but gave up 10 runs over the last two innings. Epps gave up eight of those runs at the top of sixth inning.
The Wolverines also had two errors in the inning that allowed three runs to score at one time. They gave up 12 of the 15 runs scored in the first and sixth inning.
Whitmire will have two days of rest before traveling to Westminster, S.C. to face West-Oak again on Friday, March 13th.
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