Allen, Frederick Keep Post 11 Alive

Season Totals

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A nice road trip today. Gastonia, then Mount Olive on two hours sleep. See what you're made of today by lighting and holding a firecracker. That is, unless you're Eric DuBose.

Down to his, and his team's, last strike of the American Legion season, Josh Frederick singled through the middle of the infield to score pinch-runner Matt Neal from second to tie the game in the ninth, and Wayne County took advantage of an Edenton implosion in the eleventh to win 6-3 and send their best-of-five opening round series to a fifth and deciding game at Mount Olive College Saturday night.

Nick McGee began the ninth with a walk, and Colton Fulghum bunted him to second. A fly out left Post 11 (11-8) with one out left to keep its postseason alive, and Frederick delivered on a 3-2 fastball to make it 3-3.

Taylor Allen was giving Post 11 the clutch performance it needed on the mound, and he came through in the ninth by retiring the side in order. After escaping the tenth despite two walks, he saw his teammates get him three runs. Wayne coach Brad Reaves then went to Neal. He retired two of the first three batters, and Wayne seemed on its way to tying the series. In this game, however, nothing came easy for Post 11. Neal gave up a single and hit a batter to load the bases. That brought up leadoff hitter Nikolai Simonsen. He had homered off Allen to start the game, and Neal fell behind 2-0 before running the count full.

Simonsen fouled off a fastball but watched a breaking pitch catch the inside corner of the plate to end the game. The Post 11 players then celebrated their improbable triumph.

Allen and Post 40 hurler Jonathan Brantley, who went eight innings, allowed six hits apiece as the offenses struggled to manufacture runs. Wayne put something together in the fourth to take a 2-1 lead. Cambric Moye and Scott Holloman singled. One out later, with the runners moving, Nick McGee punched a 2-1 curve through the right side of the infield to tie it. Colton Fulghum drove in the go-ahead run with a sacrifice fly.

Edenton regained the lead in the sixth. A walk and two hits loaded the bases with one out. Allen retired the next batter on a foul out, then got ahead of Weston Dodson 0-2. Dodson sent a 1-2 fastball to right for two runs and the lead.

Neal started the eleventh by lofting a fly ball to right. Simonsen dropped it, and Neal advanced to third on two wild pitches. Fulghum walked, and Neal scored when a grounder by Cody Richards was thrown away at first. Frederick laid a bunt single down the third base line to load the bases.

Two more wild pitches resulted in a three-run lead, and Tyler Edwards walked. John Wooten flied out to right, and Whitehead caught Moye looking. Frederick was out attempting to score on a wild pitch.

All the offensive heroics would have gone for naught had Wayne not gotten what it did from Allen. "He pitched tonight," said Reaves. "That's what we hadn't done the past two nights. The only time he got into trouble was when he walked the lead off hitter."

When Simonsen hit the home run, Reaves was thinking "Here we go again. But he did a great job of keeping his composure. Then they got a hit right after that but he left him there. After they scored in the sixth he kept getting better and better. He was lights out in the seventh, eighth and ninth.

"In the tenth, when he got a strikeout after going 3-0, I knew he was out of gas then. I know he got that last out, but it was like everything he had was in that one pitch."