Gallery by Greg Barnett
Bluefield – Beckley put just seven runners on base Wednesday but the important number was the amount that crossed the plate.
The Flying Eagles made the most of their opportunities, plating five of those runners for a 5-3 victory at Bluefield.
Beckley finished the night stranding just one runner on base. Bluefield suffered the opposite. The Beavers stranded 10 total runners, with most of them coming in the early innings.
“So it’s timely hitting, right?” Bluefield head coach Justin Hall said. “We got runners on and we couldn’t push them around the base paths. It’s something that – we tweaked the lineup a little bit tonight because we experienced the same thing a couple days ago. And you know, we hit the ball well, we just hit it at a lot of people.”
Bluefield often squared the ball up, striking out just once in the four innings it faced Beckley starter Taylor Scott, but those hits were often line drives directly at the Flying Eagle outfielders.
The visitors meanwhile found the gaps and even overshot them for the better.
After Taylor Mabry scored on an error in the bottom of the first to give the hosts a 1-0 lead, Beckley immediately responded in the top of the second. After a leadoff single from Brooke Bird, Kacie Fraley crushed a two-run homer run over the fence in left-center to put the Flying Eagles up 2-1.
Bluefield responded by squandering a trio of opportunities over the following three frames, the most notable one coming in the bottom of the third after Izzy Smith and Cara Brown stroked a pair of singles. Sophie Hall followed with one of her own and Smith, eager to tie the game, raced around third towards home.
Unfortunately for the senior hurler Katelyn Hamb’s throw from left field beat her to the plate for the final out of the inning, preserving Beckley’s lead.
The Beavers eventually found a way to reclaim it the third time through the lineup.
Grace Richardson did the honors of tying the game in the fifth, blasting a solo homer of the fence in right-field and fellow all-stater Maddie Lawson followed with a deeper shot over the fence in left-center for a 3-2 lead.
“I think they just got comfortable,” Hall said. “Grace had been flirting with the right-field fence her previous at -bat. And you know, she got barreled up. Maddie got a pitch to hit. And when you give Maddie a pitch to hit, that’s what happens.”
Beckley coach J.R. Bird made the decision to pull Scott and insert his ace, all-stater Aubrey Smallwood who loaded the bases with a pair of walks and an error but secured a strikeout and groundout to avoid further damage.
“We played pretty good defense,” Bird said. “I mean, they hit some balls hard that we made plays on them which you know is big. And you know, when you get a lot of runners on base you have to lock down and hit your spots as a pitcher and I think we did that for the most part. And that’s the difference in the game.”
As quickly as the Beavers regained the lead, they watched it slip through their mitts again.
A one-out walk issued to Kyndall Dooley was followed by a Smallwood single.
Brooke Bird proceeded to break the tie with a double in the left-field gap, scoring both runners, once again setting the table for Fraley and her third RBI of the night, this one on a single to plate Bird’s pinch runner.
“They’ve been our best three hitters pretty much average wise all year,” Coach Bird said. “And that’s kind of what we expect from them and that showed today. Those three hit better than we’ve hit all year and they’ve really hit the ball pretty much all year.”
“This was their second time seeing Izzy and I think that helped so all credit to them,” Hall said. “They made the adjustment between when we saw them last time. Izzy, she thought she wasn’t fast tonight. We spin the ball a lot and sometimes it doesn’t spin as much as we want it to. But you know all credit to them because you they pick their pitches.”
Smallwood locked in after her initial turbulence in the fifth, allowing just one Beaver to reach base across the final two innings, collecting her eighth victory of the year with two more games left in the regular season.
“We’re building towards sectionals,” Bird said. “You know, we had a lull in the middle. We didn’t play real well and we’re starting to play good now like we can play. And if you’re gonna start playing well, now’s the time. We built a schedule like this, tough at the end, to get us ready for the section.”
Smallwood moved to 8-4 on the season, dropping her ERA to 0.45 while Izzy Smith fell to 9-5 on the season, seeing her ERA slightly rise to 2.17 on the year.
