East Bladen’s Eagles open the NCHSAA Class 2A baseball play-offs at home Wednesday night against the Currituck County Knights, the fourth-place team from the Northeastern Coastal Conference. Game time is 6 p.m.
Coach Russell Priest’s Eagles won 14 of their first 17 games this season and clinched a tie for the Four County Conference title with an 8-5 victory over Clinton on April 25 before dropping 3 of their last 4 conference games.
East Bladen clinched the outright league title with a 6-3 victory over Union on Friday. Senior Alex Coates pitched 6 innings and allowed no earned runs as he raised his record to 10-2 on the season. Sophomore Xavier Wooten pitched the final inning to earn his third save of the season.
Sophomore Ty Watkins slugged a triple and a double in the win over Union. Coates batted 2-3 and drove in 2 runs, and sophomore Brooks McGill batted 2-3 with a double and 2 runs batted in.
Speedy catcher Kyle Tatum has stolen 30 bases and slugged a game-winning home run at Heide Trask earlier in the season. Tatum picked a potential tying run off third base in the seventh inning to seal a big 6-5 victory over Midway.
Sophomore shortstop Sincere Smith had a 9 hits in 9 at-bats streak earlier in the year and actually reached base on 11 of 12 trips to the plate during the streak.
Leftfielder Nikita Owens occupies the clean-up spot in the order and blasted 2 doubles and drove in 3 runs in a key win over Pender that vaulted the Eagles into first place. Wooten batted 3-4 with 3 rbi’s in that win, and Tatum was 3-3 with a triple.
Currituck County posted a 2-5 record against the 3 teams ahead of them in the Northeastern – Edenton Holmes, First Flight and Bertie. The Knights were 1-1 against teams from Virginia.
The Knights will have a 240-mile drive from Barco down to East Bladen.
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