RINGGOLD, Ga. - Intensity. It's not a word thrown around in baseball circles nearly as often as in more physical sports.
Yet it's still an integral aspect of the game and it's something Dalton High School baseball coach Rhett Parrott wanted to see Saturday as his team played its fourth game in five days and seventh in the past nine.
The Catamounts didn't disappoint, getting out to a 7-0 lead and hanging on for a 10-7 nonregion win at Heritage. Dalton (14-5) used five pitchers in the victory, the team's sixth win in the last seven contests, with three pitchers getting their first action of the season.
Cole Shelton earned the win with 1 2/3 innings of scoreless, hitless pitching in relief of starter J.P. Tighe, whose first start went three innings (two runs, four hits).
"It's nice the way the guys came out of the gate with that type of intensity, especially with the way last night's game turned out," said Parrott, whose team lost 5-2 at Sprayberry on Friday. "We had been asking them to keep their intensity up the whole game, and today was the best example of that so far."
Dalton took advantage of three Heritage first-inning errors to score three runs, added a run in the second on Shelton's double and made it 7-0 in the third after two more errors and Maddux Houghton's two-out RBI single.
"When you open the door for a really, really good ball club they make you pay, which is what we saw today," Heritage coach Eric Beagles said. "We've been able to do it to folks some this year, too, but today it was done to us. We have to regroup and flush it."
The Catamounts pounded out 13 hits, including three from Houghton and two each from Shelton, Tighe, Sam Stepp and Thomas Wright. Stepp and Wright each had two RBIs, including run-scoring hits in the sixth inning that made the score 9-1.
The Generals (10-5), who got two hits each from Cole Wilcox and Joseph Hill, made it interesting with two in the bottom half and three in the seventh before Dalton reliever Houghton quieted the rally by inducing a double play and getting a strikeout.
The game also marked the return of Dalton all-star Brock Nelson, who had missed the first part of the season due to personal reasons. The senior pitched two-thirds of an inning, played the last inning at first base and waited out a walk at the plate in the seventh.
"It's great to get Brock back," Parrott said. "He's been a major contributor here, and to get him back now is like having some extra life injected into us."
Contact Lindsey Young at lyoung@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6296. Follow him on Twitter @youngsports22.