In last night’s Colt baseball tournament quarterfinals at War Memorial Stadium, NWG#1 defeated Northeast Guilford 14-4 and Dudley#1 topped Dudley-Smith#2, 11-4.
Tonight Grimsley faces Northern Guilford at 6:30 and then Jamestown(Ragsdale) meets Western Guilford at 8:30pm. We will get the chance to watch Alan Ashkinazy and Johnny Smith match wits in game one and then Donnie Manness will encounter mind games with Chris Causey in game number two.
Grimsley has George Cater and company while Northern has the young guys that battled in their first varsity season this past spring. Jamestown has DeSean Anderson, the veteran, who’s been battle-tested over the course of many baseball and footall seasons while Western Guilford is a bit of an unknown group of Hornets and we will learn more about them this evening.
Northwest Guilford#1 continues to move through the COLT tournament as the heavy favorite and they re-inforced that last night with their quarterfinal win over NEG. I haven’t had the chance to see them play at length yet this summer, but they do have Mekita and Plante and others from the Vikings talent base which has never seen a bare cupboard over the last 30 years. Last night’s 14-4 finish over Northeast shows that NWG is still the team to beat.
I saw most of the game with Dudley#1 and Dudley#2(Dudley-Smith) and wouldn’t you know it, #2 went up early 4-0 and then they never scored another run last night with the 11-4 final and Dudley#1 out in front. Chabrill Shabazz got the start for Dudley#1 and got rocked a bit but when coaches Crawford and Neal made the move and brought in Eric Kimber it seemed to settle down #1 and they went on to get the win. Number two had three errors right after they had grabbed that early 4-0 lead and that let #1 right back in the game.
AJ Williams, Ray Crawford, and Kimber led the #1 hitters and they have a few little guys that come in and draw walks. Number one had the bases loaded in the bottom of the sixth inning but they couldn’t get up by ten, but still the most important thing is that Dudley#1 will move on to face Northwest Guilford#1 Thursday night in the semifinals of the COLT tournament at WMS.
*****Anyone have any current Palomino Baseball news or standings? We have been updating this on Mondays and our next scheduled visit to Stoner-White Stadium is set for Monday July 9. If you have anything on the Palominos for us, feel free to send it durhamandy@live.com.*****
Northwest #1 team members are Mikita, Clemons , McKinney , Cook, Voss, Browning, J.Wells, S.Wells, Becker, Saunders, Dixon, Stell and Haley. Mikita, Clemons , McKinney and Dixon are the returning varsity players. Plante is a great and talented kid, but he’s on the Northwest #2 team. Northwest #1 will play the championsship game at 12 p.m. July 4th at WMS. We hope everyone will come out and see a great game.