Amelia pitcher hurls perfect game in Charles City opener

Amelia County’s Billy Phillips slides in safely to third, ahead of the throw to Charles City’s Cruz Adkins.

Andre' Jones photo

Charles City Panthers opened their baseball season on March 11 looking for a terrific start against the visiting Amelia County Raiders. They now wish they could have a redo on that season opener.

Amelia pitcher Dillon Weaver went five scoreless innings, fanning all 15 batters he faced as he pitched a perfect game in handing the host Panthers a 21-0 drubbing in the non-district contest.

The top of the opening frame was filled miscues that helped the Raiders jump out to an early lead. An error by first baseman Shea Clancy allowed two runs for the visitors. More miscues would occur that would enable the Raiders to add three more runs before Panther starting pitcher Jaelan Cotman could strike out Raiders’ batter Cody Noel to end the top half of the inning.

Charles City’s offense struggles mounted as they were unable to produce any runs. In the meantime, Cotman would only last another inning before being replaced by Thomas Kelly. The pitching change wasn’t effective as Kelly gave up a total of 15 runs in three innings. By contrast, Weaver minimized the work of his defense, sitting down every batter he faced.

After the game, first year head coach Alan Jones spoke about the newcomers on his team and the difficulty in adjustments to be made by the inexperienced players.

“We have to keep working on things that we made mistakes on,” he said. “But when we cut down on the mistakes, we will play better.

“We have a lot of seniors playing their first year, and our message is you are going to make mistakes the first time and the goal is to not make them the second time,” he concluded.

Charles City fell to 0-1 while Amelia improved to 2-0.