WEB CAST.
Fuquay-Varina's Travis Long did something not often accomplished at any level of baseball as he played all nine positions on Thursday night as his club defeated Garner 15-5 at Bengal Park.
Garner (5-7) scored their first run in their opening at bat as Brandon Tant extended his on base streak to 12-games with a double off the wall in right on the game's first pitch. He was brought home later in the inning as Alec Hulmes also peppered the wall in right for an early one-run Garner lead.
Fuquay (11-4) answered right back in the bottom of the inning as Garrett Hamilton (L 0-2) surrendered a lead off home run to Addison Braswell to tie the game at one.
After catching the first inning, Long moved to first base for an inning then played second and short in the third.
While all that was going on, the Bengals exploded for six runs in the second inning with the big hits being a two-run single from Duce Johnson which chased Hamilton from the game in favor of Freshman, Brighton Hudson, who surrendered a three-run homer to cap the Bengal second.
The Trojans attempted to make a come back in the top of the third as the scored a pair of runs of Bengal reliever Devin Kelly. CJ Schmitt collected his first hit and RBI of the night as he drove Tant in from third and Taylor Stephens scored on error on the Bengal catcher.
With the bases loaded and two outs, Will Norris came to the plate and launched a ball to straight away centerfield and with the ball clearing the fence for what appeared to be a game-tying home run was brought back as Garrett Suggs made an outstanding catch to turn the Trojans away.
Fuquay really put the game out of reach in the third with five runs against the Trojans. The big knock in that frame was a two-run Morgan Pennington double and after three, the Bengals had a 12-3 lead.
After tacking on two more runs in the fourth, it was 14-4 Bengals. Meanwhile, Long had completed his tour of the infield positions and by this point had spent at least 1/3 of an inning in every outfield spot.
The only position in which Long hadn't yet appeared was on the mound, he completed that task by pitching the final 2/3 of the fifth inning to play all nine positions in the game.
Garner was able to extended the game in the top of the fifth with a pair of runs. Stephens scored on a Schmitt single while Alec Hulmes came home to score when Brett Bailey singled to left.
However, the Bengals came right back as they loaded the bases with no outs and Long ended the game with a single past a drawn in infield for the 15-5 Bengal lead.
Garner will be back in action tomorrow when they return to conference play at 7:00 as the Trojans will host Harnett Central.
**The JV baseball squad also lost to Fuquay 12-2 on Thursday, they will host Harnett Central tomorrow at 4:00**
Baseball can't figure out Fuquay
