BLYTHEWOOD – The Blythewood baseball team received a rude welcome to the Spring Valley sports complex in the first inning Tuesday night.
The Vikings hammered the Bengals 7 runs on 6 hits before Blythewood got the final out of the inning.
The end of the first spelled the end of Spring Valley’s threat. Blythewood blanked the Vikings the rest of the way and scored in every inning in a 19-7 victory that ended after six innings.
Head coach Travis Poole noted that the Bengals (6-2, 3-0 Region 5-5A) got off to another slow start at A.C. Flora Saturday but pulled out a 9-7 victory then.
“We were down Saturday 4-0, chipped away and won that game. Now we’re down 7-3 in the first, we started chipping away again,” he said. “Hats off to these guys. They don’t give up, they’re going to do what they do, stay aggressive. Good things will happen, but we’ve got to be better early.”
Amare Counts led the way with a 3-for-4 performance at the plate, including an RBI single in Blythewood’s 3-run first inning and a grand slam in the Bengals’ 7-run second.
Johnny Collins also homered with a 2-run shot in the sixth inning, and Cooper Penfield had an RBI double.
Down 3-0, the Vikings’ seven runs in the bottom half of the first lit up the scoreboard. Brady Evans, who went 2-for-4 with 3 RBI, hit a 3-run home run with nobody out to get the Vikings started. Jacob Smoak later scored on Andrew Kirby’s one-out single, M Saltzman scored on C Aldrich’s two-out single, and Rummel walked J Williams with the bases loaded for the seventh run.
Johnson took the mound and got Evans out on a fly ball to center field.
From there on, the senior right-hander pitched 5 1/3 innings of 3-hit ball, striking out 6 and walking 0.
“Chance has been the guy for us. We haven’t had to use him a lot, but every time we’ve used him this year he’s been real good,” Poole said of his starting infielder who played at second base Tuesday. “He was the first one I thought about (to take the mound), and for a lot of teams he’s a starter. I like to use him in relief because he’s real good for us defensively.”
While Johnson kept the Vikings batters off balance, the Blythewood bats stayed hot. The Bengals picked up 3 runs in the third inning, 1 in the fourth, 1 in the fifth and 4 runs in the sixth to go with the 10 runs piled up in the first two frames.
“You’ve got some guys in the lineup who have been there and buy in to what we’re trying to do,” Poole said.
The baseball team plays host to the Vikings Thursday. The Bengals have a home game Friday against A.C. Flora and play host to Lugoff-Elgin Tuesday.
FRIDAY
BLYTHEWOOD – 0-0-3-2-0-4-0 – 9, 8, 5
A.C. FLORA – 4-0-0-0-0-3-0 – 7, 6, 2
WP: Cooper Penfield, 2.0 IP, 1H
B – Sergio Melendez 2-3. Amare Counts 2-2, 2B, HR, 3 RBI. Johnny Collins HR. Brandon Bolton 2B.
F – Monty Laffitte 2-2, 2RBI. Tyler Hernandez 3B, 2 RBI. Charlie Scott 2B.
TUESDAY
BLYTHEWOOD – 3-7-3-1-1-4 – 19, 11, 1
SPRING VALLEY – 7-0-0-0-0-0 – 7, 9, 5
WP: Chance Johnson, 5.1 IP, 3H, 0R, 0ER, 6K
B – Amare Counts 3-4, HR, 6 RBI. Navy Strickland 2-3. Johnny Collins HR. Cooper Penfield 2B.
S – Brady Evans 2-4, HR, 3 RBI. Jackson Williams 2B.
