Finally!!!!! Baseball ON Saturday

The Gryphons baseball team has not been able to get in a baseball game on the last three Saturdays for an assortment of reasons , all related to rain.

Today under pouring(Normally on Saturdays rain inserted here) sunny skies the Gryphon's took on the team that they met for the Eastern 3-A title last May D H Conley.

The day did not start very well for Jason Mills the head coach of Conley as when he arrived this morning to get ready for the trip to Rocky Mount he discovered that the field house at Conley had been broken into and ram sacked.

One thing both teams had plenty of was pitching. Conley started Jordan Deloatch and he got into the fifth inning before being removed and replaced by Chad Hardee.

The Gryphons first hit did not come until one out in the fourth as Collins Cuthrell hit a line drive home run off the light pole in left center field. It hit the pole and came back onto the playing field and for a few moments Cuthrell kept digging thinking he had a double. Ben Fish followed the home run with a solid single but on the first pitch to Thomas Berry was caught trying to steal second. Wouldn't you know it then Berry hit a triple off the wall in right which would easily score Fish but was not to be.

Hobbs Johnson follow up his brilliant effort against Northern Nash with five inning of shutout baseball. Johnson's five inning he struck out six, walked one batter and allowed three singles and a double.

Benton Moss came on to pitch the sixth inning for the Gryphons and promptly hit the first batter on the hand and that run made it all the way home after being sacrificed to second and a two out hit scored him. Moss struck out the side in the seventh to bring the Gryphons to bat in the bottom of the seventh.

One out Parker Helms walked off Hardee. Spencer Bell who walked three times on the day coaxed another one to put runners on first and second with one out. Brian Goodwin who has been 0-for the week so far hit a sharp grounder to right field where Parker Helms scored on a bang bang play.

GRYPHONS 2 Conley 1

The Gryphons win their seventh game in a row to move to 9-1 on the season. Brian Goodwin was 1-4 but had the game winning rbi. Collins Cuthrell was 1-3 with a homer. Ben Fish was 1-3 and Parker Helms was 1-2 and scored the winning run.

Benton Moss gets the win with two innings of relief giving up one run on one hit. His lone free pass was the first batter he faced who he hit.

This is the third game in a row in which the Gryphons could only muster five hits. Once again Gryphon pitchers have proven all they need is two runs as in 21 innings this week the Gryphon pitchers have allowed just one run and have two shutouts on the week.

Gryphons will not play again until next Friday night as they go to Southwest Edgecombe for a conference game. Nash County Schools are out this week for the Easter Holiday

North Carolina plays sometime around 8.00pm tonight in the final four of college basketball.

Xavier Macklin the Nash Central graduate who is playing baseball at North Carolina A&T was the MEAC rookie of the month for March. Macklin hit 341 with two homers and 15 rbi's.

Xavier Joined Dillion Cockrell, Ben Fish, Gabe Brown, Cameron Ramsey and Brian Goodwin who were some of the members of the 13 and 14 year old Babe Ruth players who played in the Babe Ruth World series in Wilson and Quincy Massachusetts in 2004 and 2005. Northern Nash also has three players on those teams Tyler Joyner, Mike Williams and Tyler Clark.