CDDHS Royals baseball team make history with first win

September 24, 2014 · 0 Comments

They are a start-up club at Centre Dufferin District High School and the Royals baseball team brought home the first ever baseball win during a home game held at Princess of Wales Park in Orangeville on Wednesday, September 17.
The squad was up against Our Lady of Lourdes from Guelph and led from the early going bringing in three runs to take a 3–0 lead going into the third inning.
The Royals opened the gap in the fourth inning when Jacob Hall hit a single with bases loaded to drive in a run an still leave three men on base.
Mike Fuller’s hit to mid centre field bought enough time for Centre Dufferin to bring two more across the plate.
After retiring OLOL with no men on base, the Royals returned for the fifth inning and got the bats working and again found themselves will a fully loaded diamond.
Matt Cameron hit a single that brought in another run and with the bases still full, another walk advanced the field and another Royals base runner crossed home plate.
The game ended when Jake Currie hit to centre field and drove in two more runs to make it 12 for the Royals.
The umpire invoked the mercy rule when the count became a difference of ten runs past the fifth inning, and the game was called before going into the final inning with a score of 12–2 for the Royals.
“Good pitching and good defence,” is how coach Dave Metz summed up the win. “We had two pitchers. The first (Jacob Hall) pitcher pitched three innings, and the second (Keith Gordanier) finished up.”
With Fall season baseball, getting a team together and practicing can be a challenge since the season starts only two weeks after the school year starts. The start was made a little easier due to the fact that many of the Centre Dufferin players are experienced having played on League teams around the region including a core group who have played together for several years.
“We’re just new at molding as a team, so they’ve had a lot of experience independent of each other, and now we saw a little bit more communication and they are connecting more,” Said coach and Centre Dufferin staff member Mark Greenfield. “We didn’t have training time because we found out at the end of August that our season started in four weeks.”
A total of 40 students turned out for the initial try-outs for the Royals team.
The Royals lost their first game to Bishop McConnell on September 15, but the win on Wednesday evens out the total at 1–1 after two games.
The team will have a road game on September 25, before returning to their home diamond at Princess of Wales Park on October 1.
The first pitch for that game is schedule for 3:30 p.m.

By Brian Lockhart