Yellow Jackets have a big week ahead
♦ Calhoun gets back into 7-5A games and then plays at Truist Park Friday night.
It is a big week for the surging Calhoun High School baseball team.
Winners of six straight Region 7-5A games before they ended spring break Friday afternoon after two games in South Georgia, the Yellow Jackets have entered April feeling those positive playoff vibrations as the postseason begins later this month and they get ever closer to clinching their spot.
There are just two weeks left in the regular season for Calhoun, which had a chance, with a pair of victories in games near Florida line Thursday and Friday, to come back to Gordon County a .500 ballclub as they were 9-11 overall entering those games.
The next-to-last week of the regular season begins Tuesday for the Yellow Jackets and it is a big one for them because they are back into the 7-5A schedule with three games in three days against Woodland, with both teams presently tied for second place in the Region at 6-3.
Then on Friday, they get to showcase their talents on a giant stage when they go to Atlanta and play Buford at 4 p.m. that afternoon at Truist Park. It will be a rematch of the Yellow Jackets’ second game this year when they fell to the
Wolves, 6-5.
While everyone was looking forward to spring break and no classes this week, the Yellow Jackets may not have wanted the five-day layoff that came between their third and final game against Cass last Friday night and their first game on their South Georgia road trip Thursday evening at Colquitt County. (Details of that game were not available at press time).
Instead they probably wanted to keep playing because currently they are in their most successful stretch of the season and looking to maintain those good outcomes with the postseason just around the corner.
The Jackets enter Game One Tuesday
night against Woodland on the road with both teams knotted up in second place behind still-undefeated Cartersville, which is 9-0 in the league.
The two teams were then originally scheduled to play Games Two and Three of their series back in Calhoun on Friday and while they will still wrap up the three-game slate with a doubleheader at Chip Henderson Field, the twinbill will be played on Thursday instead, because Calhoun is in Atlanta to play Friday. (And that Buford game at Truist Park was originally scheduled to be played Saturday afternoon, April 15, but instead will take place Friday evening, April 14).
Prior to the current layoff, the Yellow Jackets put the finishing touches on a three-game sweep of Cass last
Friday night with a doubleheader sweep of the Colonels that also allowed them to pass Cass in the current standings.
After beating them 8-0 last Tuesday on the strength of two Andrew Purdy home runs that drove in five runs, the Yellow Jackets defeated the Colonels, 13-1 in Game One on Friday and then edged them 5-4 in the much-closer second game to take the series three games to none.
And in that first game, Cass ended the Yellow Jackets’ string of nearly 30 innings of scoreless pitching by notching a run in the fifth inning. Previously, the black-and-Vegasgold had won four consecutive games by shutouts and were winning 3-0 when Cass got on the board.
Calhoun pushed in the first run of the game in the third and added two more in the fourth to take a 3-0 margin before the home team ended the visitors’ amazing run of scoreless innings with their lone tally in the bottom of the fifth.
But the Jackets halted the game early by the 10-run mercy rule with a big eight-run uprising in the top of the sixth to take an 11-1 lead.
When the Colonels’ didn’t dent the scoreboard in the bottom half of the frame, that ended the game after six innings.
In the second game, good pitching and defense in the final two innings of play kept Cass from getting a win in the series.
After Cass scored its final run of the day in the top of the fifth to make it 5-4, the Yellow Jackets were able to record the last six outs and keep their win streak going.
The Colonels, who were the visiting team despite the game being on their home field, scored first in Game Two with two runs in the top of the second inning.
But the Jackets responded with two runs of their own in their first at-bat of the game to tie the game after one.
They would get three more, including the game-winner, in the bottom of the third to take a 5-2 lead before the Colonels would in their way back into it.
Cass scored once in the fourth to make it 5-3 and then got one in the fifth to make a nail-biter from that point on.
The win lifted Calhoun to 9-11 on the year and they wrapped up non-Region play with their games Thursday and Friday.
On Thursday they played the 7A Colquitt County Packers, which brought a 10-11 record into the game and the Packers are in Region 1-7A. Then on Friday, they traveled about 30 miles west to Thomas County Central in a battle of the Yellow Jackets before heading back to Gordon County after that game. (Details of those games were not available at press time).
Colquitt County is about 267 miles from Calhoun High School and Thomas Central is about the same. But Colquitt County and Thomas County Central are close enough that before Calhoun played either of them, they played each other Wednesday evening at TCC High School with Thomas County winning a 5-4 thriller.
Thomas County Central brought an 11-12 record into that game and the Yellow Jackets are in Region 2-7A.
For Calhoun, their three-game dusting of Cass allowed them to pass the Colonels, which went into the series in second place but now stand in fourth place in the Region at 5-4.
After them, Dalton, which Calhoun faces three times next week to end the regular season schedule, stands 1-8 in the Region while Hiram is still trying to get into the win column at 0-9.
Besides the important CalhounWoodland series this week, other three-game sets in the 7-5A have Dalton playing Hiram and Cartersville will take on Cass.