Odds favor Colonial Beach in drubbing, no-hitting Panthers

Charles City's Trevor Kelly (2) watches at teammate Charles Brown attempts to haul in a throw as Colonial Beach's Kyle Walker slides into second base. Walker made it safely to the bag.

Andre' Jones photo

If Charles City’s baseball team played only even-numbered innings, they would have ended in a 0-0 tie with the visiting Colonial Beach Drifters in the Apr. 4 contest.

But in innings one, three, and five, the visitors compiled 24 runs while no-hitting the host Panthers in the 24-0 drubbing.

Wasting little time, the Drifters placed the first eight batters on base with half reaching the bags on doubles. All eight runners would score along with two others before the Panthers would trail 10-0 before taking an at-bat.

A walk by Charles City’s Devin Smith in the bottom of the second accounted for the Panthers first baserunner. But strikeouts by Trevor Kelly, Michael Callahan, and Charles Brown would fail to move Smith around the basepaths for the remainder of the inning. The Drifters responded with seven more runs in the top of the third and would add an additional seven in the top of the fifth to create the final margin.

Charles City head coach Demetric Leeper commented about the need to clean up sloppy play on the field for the now 1-3 Panthers.

“We need to spend more time reinforcing the fundamentals,” the coach said, pointing to an array of errors committed in the game. “We could have gotten out the inning a couple of times but our mistakes hurt us.

“We got a couple days to get some good practices in and we can work on correcting our flaws,” he concluded.