No runs after one, Darlington drops last regular season game of the year
By Drake Horton
Contributing Writer
In what ended up being the final regular season game of the year turned out to be disappointing finish for Darlington as Post 13 lost 9-2 to South Florence Blue this Friday July 1st in Darlington.
South Florence struck first, scoring a run in the first inning, but Darlington came out of the gate on fire, answering Blue’s one run with two in the bottom half of the first inning. That was the last time Post 13 would hold the lead.
“I thought we played pretty good baseball early, they scored in the first and we came back and tacked on a few,” Darlington head coach Dennis Gearhart after the loss. “Right now we are making more mistakes than the team we are playing. They’re taking advantage of it and we’re not.”
Blue scored two more runs of their own in the second inning, both coming off of Darlington errors, to retake the lead for good.
South Florence added two more runs in the fifth with another Darlington error and a perfectly executed safety squeeze.
The bleeding did not stop there, however, as South Florence, already up 6-2, loaded the bases up with just one out just so it could clear them with a three-RBI double to the right-center gap.
Down 9-2 and its back against the wall, Darlington went scoreless in the bottom of the seventh inning to end the game.
Outside of the quick start in the first inning where Post 13 held the short lived 2-1 lead, the game was not close as Darlington never scored again in the game.
With loss, Darlington’s chance of earning a three seed in the next week’s playoff are over as Post 13 is now locked into the four seed.
“Moving forward we have a clean slate,” Gearhart said as Darlington now focuses on the playoffs. “We have to go out and play, we’re 0-0 and we’re going to Sumter and that is a good baseball team. We got to go play clean baseball. We’re guaranteed an away game, we’re guaranteed one right here we just have to make the best of it.”
Despite Darlington’s long shot of winning against Sumter, Gearhart is still happy with the team’s progression over the season and the learning experiences that have come along with it.
“I said it earlier this year, this summer is about us getting better,” Gearhart said on what was learned from this season. “We kind of knew we were going to go through some growing pains; we are very young compared to most teams we are playing. I’m looking forward to this week and seeing how we respond to a playoff atmosphere type game.”
Weekly Recap
Darlington lost to Chesterfield at home on Monday, June 27 by a score of 11-5.
Post 13 was also scheduled to play Marlboro County the following day as a makeup from an earlier game, but that game was rained out and rescheduled for Saturday.
But following the loss to South Florence and Darlington’s seed being locked no matter what, the game was simply canceled.