Knights quell Breakers for first win
Published 9:33 pm Wednesday, April 6, 2016
It was a baseball game, whether the final score implied differently or not.
The Suffolk Christian Academy Knights visited Virginia Beach to play the Beach Breakers on Tuesday and returned home with their first win of the season — a 28-7 victory.
The game was actually much closer for most of the afternoon.
“We exploded for 16 runs in the top of the seventh,” Knights assistant coach Scott Cornette said.
It was quite a turnaround from the way the contest started.
Suffolk Christian got itself into an early hole, trailing 3-0 going into the second inning. But then the Knights responded, scoring five runs in the second, three in the third, one in the fifth and three in the sixth.
The Breakers narrowed the Knights’ lead in the sixth inning with a three-run burst but still trailed by five runs, 12-7.
“Honestly, I never felt like the game was in doubt, but I honestly didn’t expect to have a hit barrage like we saw in the seventh inning, either,” Cornette said.
Suffolk Christian finished the game with 21 hits while the Breakers had nine. The Knights had three errors, but Beach had a particularly pronounced struggle with 14.
Cornette said SCA was not at its best, but it did produce quite a few impressive numbers.
“We had four players with three hits each,” he said, referencing eighth-grader Alex Feeney and sophomores Corbin Reynolds, Noah Coggeshall and Patrick Driggers.
Cornette said only one player on the team did not record a hit, and that player still had a run batted in.
“Everybody was effective,” the coach said.
Senior Michael Cornette picked up the win on the mound for the Knights, improving his pitching record to 1-2 on the season.
The Knights coaching staff went into the game with the plan to split up the pitching duties for the day. Cornette threw for three innings, freshman Austin Aydlett took the next three and Driggers closed out the game in the seventh.
Cornette allowed only two walks, gave up only three runs, two of them earned, and he threw two strikeouts.
Aydlett threw five strikeouts, allowed four walks and gave up four runs, three of them earned.
Driggers threw two strikeouts and allowed no runs.
Suffolk Christian (1-2) is scheduled to follow up this conference win with a home game on Thursday against Broadwater Academy.