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Nursing a one-run lead in the top of the seventh inning against West Davidson, the Golden Eagles suffered an all-too familiar meltdown, resulting in a disappointing 7-5 defeat on Senior Night. Trailing 5-4, the Green Dragons mounted a one-out rally with the help of East Davidson’s Keaton Hawks and a stingy home plate umpire.
Hawks retired the lead-off hitter in the seventh but followed that up with a walk to Clay Long and a plunk on Jason Gray’s backside on a 1-2 pitch. Hawks quickly got ahead of Jordan Hudson 0-2 and appeared to make the perfect pitch only to have the ump call it a ball. On the very next pitch, Hudson lined a single to right-field, plating Long to tie the score at five. Zack Burkhart followed with a run-scoring fielder’s choice and Alex Grubb tacked on a RBI single, sending EDHS (3-8, 6-12) to another defeat in which the Golden Eagles had ample opportunities to win.
“It’s tough,” said East coach Dan Tricarico. “Keaton made some good pitches and the umpire does the best he can behind the plate. He’s a lot closer to the strike zone than I am, but from where I was, he struck the kid out. He [Hawks] didn’t get the call and that’s just part of the game.”
West Davidson (8-3, 15-6) came to town as one of the hottest teams in the Central Carolina Conference with an outside shot at sharing the league crown. With rival Central Davidson looming on Tuesday, Green Dragon’s head coach Jerry Walser feared an East squad looking to play the spoiler role.
“The term they use at the higher level is trap game,” Walser said. “This is kind of what this was for us. No disrespect to East, but I told the kids that’s what champions do — they make plays when plays are there to be made.”
At the outset, Walser’s doubts were coming to fruition as the Golden Eagles jumped all over WDHS starter Burkhart, torching the southpaw for four runs through three innings. East fell behind by a run in the first but got it right back off a Hawks’ RBI double and a Ryan Coleman run-scoring single. Burkhart wasn’t fooling anyone with his pitches, especially Kevin Michael, who launched a towering homerun to left center-field on the first pitch he saw in the third, pushing the lead to 3-1. Bryson Faulkner added an RBI groundout in the frame as the Golden Eagles forged ahead by three.
“We had our chances,” said Tricarico. “We had opportunities early in the game with runners in scoring position but we couldn’t get a hit when we needed it and we left people out there.”
East’s lead vanished like a footprint in the sand thanks to Chris Ivey’s three-run bomb in the fourth that squared the game at four. Golden Eagle starter Brooks Miller allowed Ivey to tie things up with one swing by walking the first two hitters of the frame. After falling behind in the count 3-1, Miller grooved Ivey a meatball and the lefty deposited the offering on the wrong side of the right-field fence.
Gray’s error at shortstop in the bottom of the fifth inning helped East snatch the lead back, but the Golden Eagles failed to close the deal.
East closes out the regular season on Tuesday at Ledford.
Notes: Michael went 3-for-3 and scored twice... Coleman had two hits and Chad Ferguson scored a pair... Miller struck out five in five innings.
Staff Writer Eliot Duke can be reached at 472-9500, ext. 233, or at eliotduke@hotmail.com.