Natchez 10s beat Copiah, will play again tonight
Published Wednesday, July 1, 2009
NATCHEZ — The Natchez 10-year-old All-Star team won its game Tuesday night against Copiah, but Natchez coach Gary Farmer lost his contest against Franklin County after the game.
Natchez and Franklin County flipped a coin to determine which team would advance to the District 6 Sub-District Tournament championship game Thursday night and which team would have to play a semifinal contest against Copiah tonight.
The flip was needed because all three teams have one loss. Copiah has played one less game than Natchez and Franklin County, so they were guaranteed to play tonight.
Natchez and Franklin County have played the same number of games, so they had to flip a coin.
Because Natchez lost the coin toss, they must defeat Copiah for the second night in a row before advancing to play Franklin County, the team that beat them 10-9 last Friday, for the championship.
“I really wish we had won that coin flip,” Farmer said. “The coin flip was important. But that’s the breaks. Now we get to play more baseball.”
While Natchez did lose the coin flip, they are only able to play tonight because of a 12-4 win over Copiah Tuesday night in what Farmer called the team’s best performance of the tournament.
“The boys were focused tonight,” Farmer said. “They were really fired up to play. We knew how tough of a team Copiah is and knew we were going to have a battle on our hands. We were fortunate to come out on top.”
Natchez scored single runs in the first and second innings before blowing the game open in the bottom of the third with five runs.
Natchez picked up four hits in the inning, with the big ones being a two-run single by Gabe Smith and an RBI single by Dalvion Jackson.
Copiah scored one run in the top of the fourth inning and closed the gap to 7-4 with three runs in the top of the fourth.
However, Natchez scored five more runs in the bottom of the fifth inning to pull away for the victory.
Jackson had the big hit of the inning, a bases-loaded single that scored all three runs.
The other two runs of the inning scored on an error and a hit batsman with the bases loaded.
Now, Farmer said the Natchez players must forget about Tuesday’s big win and focus on defeating Copiah for the second night in a row in order to reach the championship game.
“The tough job is after an emotional win getting them fired up to play the same team again on (Wednesday),” Farmer said. “It’s going to be tough, but we’re up to it.”