ROCKY POINT – Trey Storms pitched a six-hitter and struck out 11 Tuesday afternoon as the West Bladen junior varsity baseball team hung on for a 9-7 win against Heidi Trask in a Four County 1A/2A Conference game. Only two of the runs Storms allowed were earned.
Donald McCullum led a nine-hit West Bladen offensive attack, going 3-for-4 with three runs scored, a RBI and four stolen bases. Ray Jones and Caleb Sholar each were 2-for-3, with Jones driving home two runs. Brandon Carson and Hunter Pait each had a hit and a run batted in.
West Bladen is 7-5 overall and 3-4 in league play. The Knights are scheduled to host Wallace-Rose Hill on Wednesday and Pender on Friday.
West Bladen jumped out to a 6-0 lead after 1 1/2 innings. In the first, McCullum led off the game with a strike out, but reached on a wild pitch. He stole second, moved to third on a balk and scored on Jones’ single to center.
The Knights erupted for five runs in the second inning. After an out, Jonathan Ashworth walked and Ian Sykes was hit by a pitch. McCullum, Carson, Jones and Pait followed with RBI singles, with Jones scoring the final run on an outfielder’s error.
Trask came back with two runs in its half of the second inning, but West Bladen answered with a pair of runs in the third on a hit batter, single by McCullum and two errors that made it 8-2.
The Knights added another run in the fourth when Sholar singled, stole second, moved to third on Storms’ ground out and scored on a wild pitch.
However, Trask scored once in the fourth on a pair of errors, and added four unearned runs in the fifth on a hit and three errors that made it 9-7.