Kinston remains winless but looks better against Southern Wayne
Southern Wayne downs Vikings, 4-2
It's somewhat appropriate that the most youthful prep baseball team in the area took a few baby steps toward respectability on Tuesday.
Kinston took an early 2-0 lead but ended up falling to Southern Wayne, 4-2, in Eastern Carolina 3A action at Viking Field. The loss dropped the Vikings to 0-8 overall, 0-3 in the EC3A while the Saints improved to 6-2, 2-1.
The Vikings essentially field a junior varsity squad chock full of sophomores and freshmen. Kinston's two runs - which both came in the second inning - matched the total number of runs the Vikings had scored in their previous seven games.
"The story of our season is that we'll get runners on base but we just couldn't come up with that big hit," first-year Kinston coach Jason Wade said. "We had that one big hit early on today."
With one out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the second inning, third baseman Cleveland Banks lined a pitch down the third-base line that Southern Wayne's Matt Holmes mishandled for an error. Brian Reynolds and Willie Mills scored on the miscue to give Kinston the 2-0 lead.
Southern Wayne chipped away, scoring one run in four of the next five innings. Robert Herring scored the go-ahead run for the Saints when he streaked home from second base on an infield hit by Ryan Messimer. Herring was stealing third when Messimer delivered his hit. Herring didn't slow down when he got to third and crossed home plate standing up.
That wasn't the only example of great base-running for Herring and the Saints on Tuesday. Southern Wayne scored its final run of the game when Herring took off from second base on a groundout and beat a throw to home.
"We capitalized a couple of times on good base-running plays and got fortunate enough to get out of here with a win tonight," Southern Wayne coach Trae McKee said. "(Kinston) has a good club and they're getting better."
Cody Davis led the Saints with two of his team's eight hits. Tyler Edwards and Jordan Williams provided Southern Wayne's only RBIs.
Banks had Kinston's only RBI and he also had one of the Vikings' six hits. Anthony Clark, Landon DeBruhl, Reynolds, Mills and Cody Heath had Kinston's other hits.
Clark, a junior infielder, returned for the first game since playing for the 3A state champion basketball team. He played shortstop and produced one of Kinston's six hits.
"I thought that overall, our defense looked a whole lot better," Wade said of Clark's return.
Heath was a workhorse for the Vikings on the mound, going the distance with six strikeouts and six walks while giving up eight hits and hitting two Saints. He threw 134 pitches in Tuesday's game.
The Vikings try to break their winless streak on Thursday when they host Wilson Beddingfield.
"I'm just looking at the big picture," Wade said. "I understand that this is a marathon and not a sprint, and I don't mean just this season. We can't come out and think about one game. If we win five or six games in the conference, we can make the playoffs.
"I believe we can do that. Kinston baseball has just had a losing atmosphere around here for so long that I feel if we could just win one game, so these kids could see how that feels, it would make everything fall in place."
