CAMDEN — Camden Fairview muscled its way right back into playoff contention on Thursday by sweeping a 5A South conference doubleheader from DeQueen at Camden Yards. The Cardinals won the first game 4-2 before taking the second contest 3-2 in eight innings.
The two wins improve the Cardinals to 6-5 overall, 4-3 in conference play.
Technically, the Cardinals are currently in fifth place behind the White Hall Bulldogs, but only because the Bulldogs have played one more game than the Cardinals. Both school have three losses in league play, and the Cardinals have a tiebreaker advantage over the Bulldogs due to a 10-9 head-to-head win at White Hall back on April 2.
“Last night was absolutely huge for us,” CF head baseball coach Bo Smith said earlier today. “We talked all week about being mentally tough, because it wasn’t going to be easy playing two games and DeQueen is a tough teams that we knew was not going to go away anytime during the game. They are a very scrappy team and their coach does a very good job with them.”
Camden Fairview and DeQueen were supposed to play at DeQueen on April 14, but that game was postponed due to bad weather. The game was finally rescheduled for Monday, but was rained out again. The two schools then agreed to play a doubleheader at Camden Fairview on Tuesday before it was postponed due to a wet field one more time.
Finally getting the games in on Thursday, the Cardinals played as the visitor in the first game, and scratched across a run in the second inning after Andrew Carmody reached on an error, advancing all the way to second on the bad throw. Dalton Pate later singled, allowing Carmody to score and give the Redbirds the early lead.
Camden Fairview went up 2-0 in the top of the fourth after Logan Reed walked, Jordan Semple singled and Reid Rogers walked to load the bases, and DJ Franklin drove in a run by reaching on a fielder’s choice.
The Cardinal missed out on a bigger inning when Franklin was caught trying to steal second which ended the inning, and DeQueen pulled within 2-1 with a single run in the bottom of the fifth. The inning included a lot of confusion after DeQueen loaded the bases with one out, and the next batter hit a ground ball to shortstop.
The infield umpire ruled that the ball touched the runner from second, and called him out. Although one run came in, after much discussion with coaches from both sides, the umpires ruled that the run from third would count and the remaining runners would remain at first and second. The Cardinals then got out of the inning when relief pitcher John Dawson IV induced a ground ball to second.
DeQueen still managed to tie the game at 2-2 in the bottom of the sixth, but Camden Fairview took the lead for good in the top of the seventh when Rogers walked, Franlin reached safety on a bunt, and Jake Bever singled to load the bases. After a pop out for the first out of the inning, Carmody then singled to center field to bring in the go ahead run. Dawson added another run on a sacrifice fly.
PJ Thrower then closed the door on DeQueen’s rally attempt in the seventh after the first batter of the inning reached on an error and advanced to second. Thrower got the next batter to pop out, before getting a fly ball to shallow center field and striking out the final batter to end the game.
Milner pitched the first 4 1/3 innings of the game, allowing only one earned run off two hits and six walks while striking out five. Dawson then pitched 1 1/3 innings of relief, allowing one run, not earned, off two hits, before Thrower came in to pitch the final 1 1/3 innings, and allowing no runs while striking out one.
Offensively the Cardinals were held to eight hits, with Franklin getting two doubles. Carmody, Dawson, Franklin and Pate all had runs batted in. CF had one error in the game, while DeQueen had two.
In the second game, the Cardinals again took an early lead, scoring one in the second on a sacrifice fly by Carmody and one in the fourth on a sacrifice play by Jordan Semple to go up 2-0. DeQueen managed to scratch out a single run in the fifth and a run in the seventh, however, to tie the game at 2-2 after seven innings. Camden Fairview managed to win the game in the extra 8th inning when Semple was hit by a pitch with bases loaded.
Franklin pitched an outstanding game for the Cardinals, going seven inning (normally a complete game) and allowing only one earned run off five hits and two walks while striking out eight. Rogers then came in and faced the minimum in the eighth, picking a baserunner off first after allowing a leadoff single before getting two ground balls to end the contest.
Facing DeQueen’s ace pitcher in the second game, the same one that led the Leopards to a win over White Hall last week, Camden Fairview only had four hits in the contest, including one each from Franklin, Thrower, Milner and Reed. Carmody was credited with one RBI while Semple got two.
Smith said he was proud of his team for executing in situations where they needed to manufacture runs - something he said the team works on all the time.
“We just had to scratch some out. You’re not going to bring 8-9 hits to the park every game, and we haven’t had a lot of batting practice due to all the weather and everything,” Smith said. “And hats off to their pitchers. They are very scrappy and good. The second one had a really good slider. There just isn’t anything else to say but that they are good.”
Smith said he was also extremely proud of his pitching staff, especially considering they aren’t normally asked to cover 15 innings in one night.
“We got a great start from Jameson, a great start from DJ … both went deep in the game before we had to go get them, and then PJ came and in slammed the door on them in the first game, and Reid does the same thing in the second game until we can pull it out. It was just a great job by everybody. We were able to hang in there and capitalize on some things that other teams usually to do us. We were finally able to get it to swing our way this time.”
Weather permitting, the Cardinals are scheduled to travel to Watson Chapel today for a varsity game starting at 4 p.m.