By David Shaw
sports@salisburypost.com
GREENVILLE ó The way Trey Holmes figured it, stopping now was not an option.
As long as Rowan County’s American Legion baseball team had dressed for the state tournament, it may as well dance.And so Rowan danced Saturday afternoon at Clark-LeClair Stadium, crunching four home runs in a 15-5 opening-round win against Duplin County.
“We came here with one goal in mind ó to win the championship,” Holmes said after Rowan (28-6) needed only seven innings to reach tonight’s second-round showdown with Cherryville (28-9). “All we have to do is bring it harder than whoever we’re playing, one game at a time.”
Rowan looks like a team built to blast after Holmes delivered a fourth-inning grand slam and a three-run homer in the fifth. The game ended when Russell Michalec (with two on) and Casey Little (with one aboard) went deep in the seventh.
“You never know what’s gonna happen with this team, offensively,” coach Jim Gantt said. “We weren’t coming in here counting on that at all. We just wanted to put some hits together, and luckily we got them up in the wind and they went out of the park.”
For three innings the game was a tight pitcher’s duel between Rowan’s Corbin Shive and Post 127 right-hander Braxton Lewis. Rowan led 1-0 courtesy of a first-inning groundout by Noah Holmes, who was spectacular defensively. In the bottom of the fourth inning, Matt Miller grounded a leadoff single up the middle, Philip Miclat coaxed a four-pitch walk and Preston Troutman reached on an error, loading the bases with none out for leadoff batter Trey Holmes.
“That gave us a chance,” said Holmes, who finished 3-for-3 with four runs scored and seven RBIs. “I was just trying to be efficient and do something with it. I wanted to help the team out.”
Holmes, a left-handed swinger who had lined a double into the left-field corner and scored Rowan’s first run, accounted for its next four with one swing. He belted a 1-0 fastball on the outer half of the plate over the wall in left-center, providing a 5-0 lead.”I was disappointed, but I wasn’t mad because that guy can flat-out hit,” said Lewis, a pitcher at Division II Barton who was chased in the fifth. “I was leaving pitches over the plate, but he hit an outside pitch and hit it backside. He rode the ball the other way, and it just carried. Good college hitters will do that to you.”
Another telling compliment came from younger brother Noah, the third baseman with suction-cup hands.
“When Trey’s hitting and everything’s going good, we’re a happy team,” he said. “He’s our leader.”
They were even happier after Trey’s next at-bat. It came after Duplin (14-13) got to Shive for four runs on five hits in the top of the fifth, forcing Gantt to replace the unbeaten right-hander with Parker Gobbel. This time Holmes christened reliever Corburt Allen with a three-run homer, yanked over the wall in right field, that made it a 10-4 ballgame.
“The grand slam Trey hit was big, and the three-run home run was just as big,” Gantt said. “I think the difference in the game today was the Holmes boys. Noah made three great defensive plays ó two barehanded ó and Trey got all the big RBIs and caught a guy in a rundown.”
Another huge play came when Gobbel induced an inning-ending flyout with the potential tying run on second base in the fifth. Cody Laws defused a Duplin rally in the sixth and pitched a scoreless seventh. The late fireworks by Michalec and Little wrapped it all up in a pretty package.
“It’s a good start,” Little said. “We’ll go from here.”
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NOTES: Trey Holmes leads the team with 13 home runs, the third-highest total in program history. Coe Brier hit 22 in 1980 and 17 in 1979. … Outfielder Zach Smith will be back with the team today. … Gantt said Billy Veal (4-0) will start tonight at 7 p.m.