Bainbridge High baseball team opens summer season with four games
Published 5:56 pm Friday, June 3, 2016
Brandon O’Connor — Post-Searchlight
Contact: Shortstop Dalton Harrell singles in the Bearcats’ summer ball home opener against Seminole County. Summer ball gives young players and veterans the opportunity for extra reps and instruction.
Following the most successful season in school history, which saw them advance to the second of the state playoffs for the first time, the Bainbridge High School Baseball team wasted little time getting back on the field.
“Summer ball for us, the best way I can gather it, is equivalent of spring practice in football,” head coach Brian McCorkle said. “We want to get our older guys and get them some reps to help them with their weekend stuff. And then our younger guys we get out here.”
The Bearcats opened their summer season on Tuesday, May 31 with a double-header against Chiles High School from Tallahassee and Cairo High School in Cairo. The Bearcats defeated Chiles in the first game 7-1 and tied Cairo in the second 8-8.
“Its big for our guys that want to get on the field next year to get right back in and understand what we expect and how we got to play and the way we want to play to be successful,” McCorkle said.
The Bearcats returned home Wednesday. They jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead over Brookwood before the game was called in the fourth inning due to inclement weather.
On Thursday they hosted Seminole County. After falling behind 3-0, the Bearcats cut the lead to 3-2 when Carson Inlow hit a hard shot past the out stretched glove of the Seminole County second baseman. The Seminole County outfielder took a bad angle to the ball and it was able to roll all the way to the outfield wall.
The first Bearcat run came into score and Inlow hustled around the base paths for an inside the park homerun.
The game ended in a 3-3 tie after the Bearcats drove in a late run in the bottom of the seventh.
The summer season differs from the regular school season as there are considerably more substitutions and the coaches have more amble opportunities to correct mistakes in real time.
“There’s no substitute for correcting a problem immediately,” McCorkle said. “A kid does something we need to correct fundamentally or mentally and we get it corrected and then we don’t have that problem again. It’s a lot easier during the summer time to do that.”
The Bearcats return to the field when they host Seminole on Tuesday, June 7 at 3:00 p.m. at Bearcat diamonds.
