BY DAVID SHAW
SALISBURY POST

CONCORD — Perhaps the members of West Rowan’s baseball team should have carried brief cases onto Webb Field Friday night.

The Falcons came to this quirky old ballpark and promptly took care of business, dismissing host Concord and clinching third place in the congested SPC standings.

“We needed to win this one and we accomplished that,” coach Chris Cauble said after West (9-7, 14-9 overall) closed its regular season with an 11-3 victory. “Now we’ve got to figure out where we stand.”

They stand alone in third place — the only conference team with seven losses — and will host sixth-seeded Sun Valley in a first-round SPC tournament game Monday night.

“It wasn’t a great game for either team but we did what we had to do,” said Ben Hampton, West’s born-again slugger. “Now we can go into the tournament with a little more emotion, a little more drive.”

West can secure a 3A state playoff berth as long as a lower-seeded team doesn’t win next week’s tourney. If the Falcons capture the championship, they’ll enter the states as a No. 2 seed.

“Whatever we’ve got right now,” said winning pitcher Jared Barnette (7-4), “they can’t take away from us. It’s ours.”

You couldn’t knock Barnette’s flawless two-inning performance last night. The junior right-hander recorded six consecutive strikeouts before Cauble lifted him, kicking off a parade of five moundsmen.

“That was a planned thing,” said Cauble. “Jared will start our first playoff game so I wanted him to be fresh. He did throw the ball harder than he has all season.”

Barnette was relieved by Shawn Trosper, who begat Steven Ashby, who was spelled by Anthony Dudas, who gave way to John Brooks, who finished it off with a pair of seventh-inning strikeouts.

“Coach said I was only gonna pitch two innings,” said Barnette. “But when I got out there and felt as good as I did, I kind of wanted to go more. Still, I knew what was at stake.”

So did Hampton, the lefty-swinging catcher who led West’s 14-hit attack. He smashed a pair of opposite-field home runs, collected five RBIs and raised his batting average to a season-high .317.

“All my home runs this year have gone the other way,” said Hampton, a dead-on fastball hitter who hasn’t seen many fastballs this spring. “And they weren’t bloop homers. They all had some zip on them.”

Hampton gave the Falcons a 3-0 first-inning lead when he launched a 2-0 fastball from losing pitcher Nick Broome over the short left-field fence. In the third he went deep for the fourth time this season, blasting a shot off the auxiliary press box well beyond the left-center field wall.

“He’s finally figured out that he can hit the ball just as hard to left-field as to right-field,” said Barnette. “It’s definitely a great time to start doing what he’s doing.”

In the meantime, West’s small army of pitchers checked Concord (0-16, 2-19 overall) on three hits — doubles by Neal Clay and John DeBerry, and Erik Jackson’s infield hit.

“We needed to go out and shut them down in the first inning,” said Spiders’ coach Chris Lankford. “And we didn’t do that. We haven’t had the sticks to battle back.”

NOTES: West split its two regular-season games with Sun Valley, losing 7-0 on March 23 and winning 5-1 on April 20. ... Corey Ruff and Justin Graham each went 2-for-4 for the Falcons while Ashby stroked a two-run triple. ... West got hits in every inning and scored in all but the second.