Ragsdale 10 Southeast Guilford 0

in six innings for the Mid Piedmont 3A Tournament Championship.

Sorry about the weekly scores but this game deserves it's on thread. The Tigers played that well tonight. Considering SE Guilford was the #1 team in the state, that they had beaten Ragsdale pretty handily twice, pounding out more hits than you could count both times, that a sore armed Ragsdale team had to start a closer hoping to get a few innings then do a staff game all while facing all world Austin Moyer, well this game did not look like one Ragsdale could win, much less dominate.

And dominate they did. Ragsdale jumped out to a 2-0 first inning lead and never looked back. There were so many heroes for Ragsdale tonight it's almost hard to figure out where to start.

First - winning pitcher Kyle Brandenburg (who was the tourney MVP). Kyle is a junior shortstop that is an occasional relief pitcher for the Tigers. He is a side arm/submarine pitcher who is very effective - but usually only for a couple innings at best. Tonight when I got there I heard several parents saying he would go two, maybe three innings if he pitched well - after that - who knows who the Tigers would bring. So what did Kyle do? He pitched a complete game, 2 hitter (2 singles) giving up only two walks and no runs in six innings. An unbelievable performance.

One reason he pitched so well was the defense backing him up. While Ragsdale was charged with two errors - they were both on tough throws on bang-bang plays at first. With Brandenburg pitching, sophomore Mike Whited played SS and turned in an awesome defensive game. Going high to catch a line drive, making a great stop and toss to second to get a lead runner by a half step and making a great diving catch going out behind second base to end a SEG rally. Great to see him step up and make the plays when needed.

FR Zack Hodges came in to play third for David Coffey and made a couple plays and also had a big double.

Ben Fultz - sophomore second baseman who is greased lightning on the base paths made a great catch way out in right and went 4-4 with a triple and three RBIS. His three RBIS were all driving in CF DeSean Anderson who was 2-3 and reached after getting HBP.

DH Nick McBride was 2-4 with two triples and four RBIs and Ryan Andrejco had the last hit and RBI to stake the Tigers to the 10-0 lead in the sixth. Then Brandenburg made it stand up getting SE 1-2-3 in the sixth.

And I can't leave out sophomore catcher Walt Sparks who caught his third game of the week. Walt reached in the third on an error (maybe an IF single) and tweaked his back as he hit the base avoiding the tag. But he shook it off and played a great defensive game. Cody Myers at first also played a nice game and gets the Red Cross award for taking a spike last night and taking a bad hop throw to the throat early tonight. Billy Stone also made a couple nice catches in left tonight as well.

All in all just a great performance by Ragsdale tonight. Ragsdale goes to 19-7 on the season is should have a ton of confidence heading into the playoffs.

Ragsdale-- 202 042 -- 10 10 2
SE Guilford 000 000 -- 0 2 4

 

Looks like we might have a new #1 team in East Rowan.........

 

you probably do. SEG is a great team but tonight showed that even a great team has a hard time beating a very good team three times. Too bad Ragsdale didn't have more to play for. They were already locked in to the #2 seed.

 

yea its always very tough to beat a good team 3 times.

there might possibly be a 3rd round matchup in the playoffs between East Rowan and Southeast Guilford.

 

Have you seen the brackets? I could not find them!!!

 

Brackets.

http://www.nchsaa.org/championships.php?mode=publicviewchamps&sportID=15

 

Thank you.