Daleville baseball opens up with tough doubleheader

The Daleville Warhawks (0-2) got the 2019 baseball season off to a rocky start on Feb. 2 with a doubleheader on the road against Pike County. The Warhawks fell 12-2 in the first game and 22-1 in the second.

Daleville was originally supposed to kick off the season with a game against Goshen on Feb. 19 but due to a number of players also playing basketball – and the state tournament ongoing – that game had to be cancelled.

In the two games, Casey Moore led Daleville with two hits, while Jordan McDonald, Gabe Gordon, Cortez Buckhalter and Blake Moore each had a hit. In those two games Daleville walked or hit 23 batters and had 24 errors as a team, as well.

“Any time you do that you won’t have much of a chance to win,” Daleville coach Barry Gardner said. “We have to clean up our pitching and fielding a lot.”

The Warhawks also left runners stranded on base, in scoring position, 14 different times in the two games.

“We got on base pretty good but we just couldn’t score,” Gardner said. “When you leave that many players in scoring position you really hurt yourself. We have to cut down on those errors and walks and we have to score when we have runners in position.”

A number of Daleville baseball players also played JV basketball, which cut down on the possible practice time for them along with the varsity basketball players on the team only having one full practice before the opening game.

“They just have to get back into the swing of things,” Gardner said. “It’s been awhile for a lot of them and now we’re just working on a lot of situational stuff for them. It just takes repetition. We’ve been practicing and hitting on our errors a lot, and when we have runners on second or third we have to knock them in. We’ve really been emphasizing that. We just have to make the routine plays out there.”

The Warhawks will hit the road again for another doubleheader on Feb. 28 at Elba starting at 4 p.m. before traveling to Goshen for another doubleheader on March 4.