'Sloppy' Heritage wins

March is considered the start of the growing season. We're not talking vegetables, roses or weeds. This is about baseball, and March is when aspiring high school playoff teams either grow or wilt.

Tuesday's 8-4 Heritage win over Catoosa County rival Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe left both coaches wanting to see more growth in their teams. For Heritage (3-0), which built an 8-0 lead through four innings, coach Eric Beagles wants better focus on the details. For first-year LFO coach Johnny Burch, the start of Tuesday's game showed a team that didn't think it could win.

"That was as sloppy a game as I've ever seen where we ended up still winning it," Beagles said. "Now, you have to give Lakeview credit for standing up there and knocking it around. They didn't quit, but when we don't focus or concentrate, we can be as ugly as anybody you can watch play, and that's extremely disappointing.

"We've got a tremendous amount of work to do and a long way to go."

One thing Beagles was pleased with was the five innings of strong work put in by starter Cody Sherlin, who gave up two unearned runs on six hits with five strikeouts. Sherlin got early support with two unearned runs in the first inning and four runs in the second.

Cleanup hitter Jake Sampson had the big hit in each inning, an RBI single in the first and a two-out three-run double in the second. The Generals added two runs in the fourth on an error and Jordan Liles' RBI single to go up 8-0 and appeared to be on cruise control until the sloppy play started springing up.

Two errors in the last three innings helped lead to the LFO rally, though the Warriors (2-3) also got big hits from Daniel Deocampo, Corey Crawford and Levi Scudgins (a two-run double) to get the game within striking distance. Crawford's two-out single in the seventh off reliever Austin Morris made it a three-run game, but Morris struck out Joshua McNabb to end the game.

"Obviously, we're trying to grow a little bit here, especially with our arms," said LFO's Burch, who received 3 1/3 innings of one-hit shutout relief from Dusty Melford. "We didn't throw terribly today, and we may have found some guys who can fill some roles. I felt like we came out tight, for whatever reason. It wasn't until we settled in there around the fifth inning that we started playing.

"By my count we gave up two earned runs and they have eight on the board. We have progressed in our five ballgames, but we're not where we want to be yet."

Sampson and Hunter White had two hits each for the Generals, while Scudgins had two of LFO's eight hits.

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