Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Three pitchers combined for a no-hitter and four batters left the yard as North Davie’s baseball team punished Summit 18-0 in three innings in Winston-Salem on April 11.

Ty Greene, Nolan Allen and Alex Bowles each pitched one inning of hitless ball. Offensively, Ty Sain (2 for 2), Tanner Steinour (1-2), Blake French (1-2) and Bowles (1-1) all homered for the Wildcats, who got a double from Ian Patton.

ND 5, SD 3

Two days later, the Wildcats got a tougher-than-expected test from host South Davie. They rode a three-run first inning to their eighth win in 10 tries.

“We always tell the kids that in rival games you get each team’s best game,” coach Trevor Gooch said. “Hats off to the South Davie team and coaches for a well-played game.”

North’s savior was French, who starred on the mound and at the plate. He took the ball in the fifth inning with the tying run at the plate, and he responded with a strikeout to keep the margin at 5-3. He wound up working 2.1 hitless innings. And then there was French’s bat. He cracked two home runs and drove in three runs.

“Blake was our superman today,” Gooch said. “He also made some nice catches in center field.”

But French wasn’t the only hero. Patton, who pitched 2.2 innings in middle relief, escaped a bases-loaded jam in the second. Steinour and Sain both went 2 for 4. Reynolds Tomlinson made a catch in left field that thwarted a potential South rally in the fifth. And Steinour was nails behind the plate.

“Reynolds made the defensive gem of the night,” Gooch said. “(With runners at the corners in the third), Tanner executed a perfect fake throw to second, and he ran down the runner on third. In the bottom of the fifth, he threw out a runner at first on a dropped third strike from the backstop. Tanner was a clutch player at crucial points of the game.”

The game ended after six innings because of the two-hour time limit.