JV comeback falls short at Hallsville

The Whitehouse JV baseball team learned a valuable lesson last Thursday night in Hallsville: It is a lot easier to win if you don't spot the home team a seven run lead. Unfortunately, some lessons are learned the hard way and that was the case last week when five Wildcat miscues in the field led to seven runs for the Bobcats in the first two innings before the Wildcat bats got rolling to only to fall short 8-6 in the end.

Most of the seven runs were unearned and were not a reflection of the solid pitching performance of Justin Haney through the first five innings before Payton Smith came on in relief to hold Hallsville to no runs over the final two innings.

Whitehouse had previously dropped a tournament game to Hallsville due to poor defense and things looked very similar through the first two innings as the Bobcats built a 7-0 lead. However, the Cats were determined to make a game of it and struck for five runs in the top of the third as Conner Crawford had an RBI single, Austin Kea drove in two runs with a single and Conner Cashion delivered a double with the bases loaded scoring two.

Hallsville then scored one in the bottom of the fourth only to see the Wildcats get it back in the fifth inning as Dalton Stroud reached on a walk and then got to third on a wild throw on the pick off attempt at first. He then scored on a single to right by Logan Newton to make the final score 8-6.

The JV will return to action tomorrow night as they host the Marshall Mavericks with the first pitch scheduled for 6 p.m.