Eagles take a stand
Hitting powers Coosa’s baseball team to a win that breaks a sevengame skid.
When a baseball team hasn’t won a game in three weeks, it can be tough to keep up its spirits. But the Coosa Eagles ignored their seven-game losing streak Friday and stayed aggressive nearly every chance they got.
Coosa never shied from swinging the bat and rode Caleb Shiftlett’s pitching for an 8-2 win against Model in a Region 7-AA matchup in Coosa. The Eagles scored in five of six innings.
“What we did at the plate is something we talked about all season long,” Coosa coach Will Wiggins said. “We wanted to score in every inning and we almost
did that. When that happens you aren’t losing many games.”
Shiftlett picked up the win going
5 2/3 innings with four hits and two runs allowed with two walks. Mason O’Neal had three hits including a two-run homer and two-run double, while Logan Pledger had two hits, including a double.
Model (3-17, 3-7 7-AA) got two hits from Trevor Proctor, while Bo Turner and Dan Whitefield each recorded a hit and a walk. But the Blue Devils simply never got the same offensive output as Coosa, which scored the game’s first four and the last four runs.
After Dylan Callahan scored in the first, O’Neal pounded a ball over the left field wall to make it 3-0 in the second inning. The Eagles would add one more run in the inning, and the hitting began to become contagious.
“Mason really set the tone,” Wiggins said. “He is really somebody we have been looking up to, and he probably hasn’t been hitting it the way he wanted to. But today he made an adjustment and he did his job.”
Coosa (7-14, 3-7) didn’t just rely on a few players to produce offensively, with every player in the lineup taking part in at least one rally. Eight different players scored a run while seven different players got a hit.
Model cut Coosa’s lead in half to 4-2 in the top of the fourth as Tristan Belk and Caleb Heard were both able to score.
But a two-run double from Brooks Moore in the bottom half of the inning pushed the Eagles’ lead back to four runs and kept them in control.
The Blue Devils left runners on base after the fourth, and Model coach Brett White hoped his team would push for more urgency at the plate.
“In those key situations, we just have to be aggressive there,” White said. “We were just letting too many fastballs go by. We needed somebody to step up and be the guy. Nobody did that for us.”
With Model not scoring, Coosa scored a few more runs in the fifth and sixth for insurance.
Model plays at Dade County on Monday while Coosa hosts Gordon Central on Tuesday.