Baseball

3A Baseball: Manuel shines as West Henderson downs J.H. Rose, 6-2

The West Henderson Falcons took the first game of the best-of-three 3A baseball state championship series with a 6-2 win over the J.H. Rose Rampants on Friday in Burlington.
Posted 2023-06-03T04:17:05+00:00 - Updated 2023-06-03T04:17:05+00:00

The West Henderson Falcons took the first game of the best-of-three 3A baseball state championship series with a 6-2 win over the J.H. Rose Rampants on Friday in Burlington.

Star junior pitcher and NC State commit Truitt Manuel threw a complete game on the mound and worked around a couple challenging innings to turn in an overall dominant performance.

Manuel threw 107 pitches in the effort, meaning he has some remaining below his limit to potentially be available tomorrow if the right situation arises.

On the offensive side of things, the Falcons struck early with a home run in the top of the first by senior catcher Alex Anderson, who was the second batter of the game.

Anderson later made a high-level defensive play with his arm to finish off a key double play to get his team out of a jam.

After Anderson's home run, the Falcons didn't generate very much hard contact off Rose pitcher Andrew Wallen, but they were able to wait out some high counts and put baserunners on.

Some more hard contact came through in the fourth when Manuel tripled to right field to score two runs that made it 4-0 and wound up being the game-winners.

The Rampants broke though against Manuel with two runs in the fifth to get back in to the game, but the Falcons answered back with a run in the top of the sixth to put it back out of reach.

Game two of the series will take place tomorrow at 2:00 P.M. A win by West Henderson would make them the state champions, while a Rose win would force a game 3 that would be played either at 5:00 or 8:00 P.M. depending upon the result of the 4A game two earlier in the day.

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