After falling behind 3-0 in the first inning, the Raider nine battled back, and tied the game at 3-3 against Pender on Monday night, without getting a single hit. A pair of errors by the Pender second base-man allowed players that had reached base via walk or error to come across and get them back in the game in the bottom half of the second inning.
Pender responded with a couple of runs of their own, and eventually had a 4-3 lead. After this, the Raiders began hitting the ball, and after an Adam Butler single tied the game, then he scored on a wild pitch, the home team would never look back.
Midway tacked on another run on a wild pitch in the 6th inning, followed by an RBI double by Landon Dorman. Jake Clark would later drive Dorman in, and give Midway the cushion they needed to send Pender home packing. The final was 8-4, Raiders.
Chandler Williford, an impressive freshman pitcher for Midway was stoic throughout, as he got the win. He pitched a complete game, allowing 3 earned runs on 7 hits. He struck out 6 batters, hit a batter, and walked a batter.
He threw 68 out of his 85 pitches for strikes, and never seemed troubled by any situation thrown his way.
Midway head coach Jason Fussell liked the way his team battled early, staying in the game despite not hitting the ball all that great.
“We haven’t been a great hitting team all year,” said Fussell. “We have gone back to some basics, trying to manufacture runs in ways that you normally wouldn’t think we’d score runs. That’s something that we’ve really worked on in practice, and I thought we did a good job of that tonight.”
Midway was led by Dorman’s RBI double. Wesley Johnson and Greg Nobles each had hits for the Raiders as well. Austin Raynor had 2 RBIs and Williford helped his own cause with an RBI for himself.
The Raiders are back in action on Tuesday as they’ll take their 8-8 record up again the visiting Wallace-Rose Hill Bulldogs. They are then set to head down south to take on Trask on Friday. They are currently in third place in the Four County Conference, as Clinton and East Bladen are holding down the top two spots.