Baseball: Western Branch tops Hickory to take control in Southeastern

CHESAPEAKE 

Western Branch coach Roland Wright has likened the Southeastern District baseball race to a heavyweight fight.

On Tuesday the Bruins hopped off the mat with the resilience of a cagey veteran in the ring.

Spurred by Jacob Pierce’s last at-bat home run and a gritty pitching performance by Chad O’Connor, Western Branch rallied past rival Hickory 5-4 to take a one-game district lead into today’s season finale.

The Bruins recently lost three consecutive games without two injured starting infielders. But Tuesday’s victory – the team’s third straight – puts them in position to win the club’s first regular-season district crown since 2001 by beating King’s Fork today.

Western Branch (16-3, 14-3 district) beat the Bulldogs 16-1 earlier this season.

“We never got down, even after those three losses,” O’Connor said. “We knew how to react and get back on the horse.”

On Tuesday, O’Connor recovered from a four-run second inning to retire 12 of the final 16 batters. He allowed two hits over the final five frames and was helped by three double plays during that stretch.

Pierce provided the offensive heroics with a two-run home run in the top of the seventh inning. Trailing 4-3, he clobbered a pitch from reliever Brett Harris over the left centerfield fence.

“I was just trying to move the runners around,” Pierce said, “and get somebody in scoring position so we could get at least one run that inning.”

Both starting pitchers struggled early, perhaps hindered by the cool weather or a delayed start after senior night festivities. That meant the duel between O’Connor and Hickory ace Gary Ward didn’t materialize until after the first few innings.

Ward, pitching on four days rest, allowed two hits, walked seven and struck out eight over 51/3 innings. He left after issuing two walks in the sixth and tossing 121 pitches. Harris worked out of a sixth-inning jam before giving up Paul Jaglowski’s single and Pierce’s homer in the seventh.

O’Connor collected his eighth strikeout in the seventh, then his 118th and final pitch yielded a sharply hit ground ball and a 6-4-3 double play.

A fitting knockout punch.

“We got back up as a team,” Wright said. “You’re going to get hit in this sport a lot of times, but you’ve got to be willing to get back up and fight, and I think we showed that tonight.”

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