The Lakewood Leopards boys varsity baseball team was back in action Thursday night, hosting their rivals the Hobbton Wildcats. The Leopards staved off a wild Hobbton comeback to win the game 9-7 in Salemburg.
Both teams started off slow, with the game being 1-0 in Lakewood’s favor until the bottom of the third inning. In the bottom of the third, Lakewood caught fire and put up a couple of runs to go up 3-0 heading into the fourth inning.
Hobbton, however, fought back, scoring two runs of their own to tighten the lead to 3-2. Lakewood answered with a run, pushing their wobbly lead back to two runs.
Yet, the Wildcats again fought back as they refused to go down without a fight. The Wildcats tallied another run to make the score 4-3 going into the bottom of the fifth inning.
The bottom of the fifth inning is where Lakewood began pouring on the runs. The Leopards were did extremely well at the bat and took their biggest lead of the game into the seventh inning, a 9-3 lead. This commanding lead made it look like the Leopards could be heading towards blowing out the Wildcats, but they had other plans.
Alternatively, Hobbton scored several runs of their own in an attempt to come back and make a game of it. They scored four straight runs as the Wildcat crowd that made the trip cheered their team on. Unfortunately for Hobbton, this comeback fell short, and Lakewood pulled out a close 9-7 win.
Lakewood head coach Jay Faircloth was happy with how the Leopards responded following a loss.
“We bounced back because we lost Tuesday night to Princeton and I was just proud to see my boys come out fired up,” Faircloth said.
Lakewood improves to 6-3 overall and is 5-2 in the Carolina 1A Conference. They look to carry this momentum into Tuesday when they travel to face off against the Gators of Spring Creek.
Hobbton head coach Chris Carroll was very pleased with his boys despite the loss.
“This is a team that is resilient. This is a team that wants to fight and I am super proud of every member of the Hobbton Wildcats baseball team. They are going to continue to do an amazing job,” Carroll said.
The Wildcats fall to 3-9 overall and are 1-6 in the conference.