It was a good week for Panther baseball.
After dropping their last four games, Franklin needed a pick-me-up over spring break, hosting North Buncombe and Smoky Mountain at McConnell Field. With an extra-innings win over Buncombe and a 9-1 rout of Smoky, Jared Greenwood’s team got their season back on track.
On Monday, April 1, the Panthers welcomed North Buncombe to Macon Middle School for a non-conference meeting with the Black Hawks. There Franklin drew first blood in the second, turning four singles, a wild pitch, two errors and two stolen bases into a 3-0 lead.
Senior Malachi Hayes kept Buncombe scoreless on the mound, until the Hawks plated a fourth-inning run on two walks, two stolen bases, a Panther error and a sacrifice fly. Franklin answered in the bottom of the inning, going up 4-1 on an Anderson Terrell single, a wild pitch and two groundouts.
The Panthers stayed hot in the bottom of the fifth, scoring again on a Malachi Hayes walk, a stolen base, a groundout and a sacrifice fly. Buncombe’s offense exploded in the top of the sixth however, plating four runs to tie the game at 5-5.
The game grew quiet for the next several frames, with senior Ian Knepp holding Buncombe scoreless on the mound. In the bottom of the ninth Franklin finally broke through, loading the bases on a Knepp leadoff double, a Hayes intentional walk and a perfectly-placed bunt single from Jaxon Hursey. On the next at-bat, freshman Will Rauers drew a walk to bring the winning run home for an epic 6-5 win.
“We haven’t won very many games, so to come out here and play a great game of baseball feels great,” said Hayes after the game. “All the boys behind me played great tonight, so thanks to them.”
On the mound, at the plate and in the middle of the infield, Hayes has been invaluable to the Panthers this year. While he’s always been one of Franklin’s best position players, the senior credited his improvement as a pitcher to dedicated offseason work.
“In the summer and fall, all I do is play,” said the North Carolina Wesleyan University commit. “I play for a team out of Asheville, the Diamond Mine, and we go all over the place playing tournaments, so it never stops.”
The night after their extra-innings win, the Panthers returned to McConnell Field for a Mountain Seven clash with Smoky Mountain. There the Mustangs got on the board first, plating a second-inning run off a single, a double and a sacrifice fly.
Smoky’s defense broke down in the bottom of the inning, committing three errors in its first four at-bats. From there Franklin began to cash in, scoring six runs off a Hayes double and singles from Terrell, Hursey and Rauers.
Franklin’s offense stayed hot into the third, going up 9-1 on a Mustang error, a sacrifice bunt, an Addix Sutton walk, a Knepp double and another Terrell single. Pitchers Josiah Hursey and Abram Apel held Smoky scoreless the rest of the way.
“It’s been coming,” said head coach Jared Greenwood of the back-to-back wins. “We’re slowly getting out of our heads and starting to put balls in play. We moved some guys around and started making plays, and you could see it. It’s just one of those things where they had to believe that it’ll work; we just had to stay the course. We got good pitching the last two days, we got good defense and we put the ball in play.”
“Now they’ve got a taste of that, and I think this team could be a little scary going forward,” he said. “The bats are coming around, but they’re still not hot, so when six, seven eight guys in this lineup get hot, it’s a scary lineup to navigate through as an opposing pitcher. You look around the infield and there’s a lot of really, really good gloves. You look in the outfield and you’re gonna have to drop a ball in the gap, because we’re gonna run it down and catch it. It could get real nasty moving forward if we all get hot.”
The team traveled to Pisgah for another conference game after press time April 8.