PHOTO BY BRIAN HOFFMAN
It’s been a streaky season for the Glenvar High baseball team. The Highlanders opened the season with six straight losses, then won their next five. However, they’ve now lost three in a row to fall to 5-9 as the struggle to get to .500.
The Highlanders lost two games on the road in the past week. Last Thursday in Hillsville they managed just two hits in a 6-0 loss to Carroll County. The Cavaliers’ pitcher had a perfect game, 15 up and 15 down, through five innings before Gray Hutchison and Peyton Deel singled in the sixth.
Carroll took an early lead off Glenvar starter Cale Vaughan. In the bottom of the first inning the first three Cavaliers reached on a double and two singles and Carroll was up 2-0 after one frame. That proved to be enough.
Vaughan settled down and allowed just two more earned runs and struck out five through the fifth inning before Hutchison pitched the sixth.
On Monday of this week the Highlanders traveled to Class 3 Christiansburg and got shut out again, this time 3-0. Like the game before, they fell behind early, as starting pitcher Rhett Henderson gave up three hits and three runs in the first inning. After that Rhett was strong as he finished his five inning stint with four scoreless innings and 10 strikeouts.
Henderson was one pitch away from an “Immaculate Inning” in the third. He struck out the first two batters on three pitchers and had an 0-2 count on the third. However, a border line pitch that would have given him three outs on nine straight strikes was called a ball and that batter then got a hit before Henderson struck out the next man to end the inning.
“I thought it was a strike,” said GHS coach Jeremy Cromer of the ninth pitch of the inning.
The Highlanders were back in action Wednesday with a home game against Northside, but results were too late for publication. On Friday they have a big Three Rivers District game at Radford, and on Monday they go to Buchanan for a 3RD game with James River at 5:30 pm.
