North Duplin's excellent season comes to an end

MOUNT OLIVE — After winning 15 games in-a-row, the number one seeded North Duplin Rebels were defeated by the 13th seeded Northside-Pinetown Panthers in the fourth round of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association 1A state playoffs.

Coming off of the success of their 13-2 win against East Columbus, things looked to be continuing in the right direction for the Rebels on Friday when, after Lilly Fulghum walked Taylor Willard to begin the game, the Rebels catcher Abby Norris made an excellent defensive play to throw out Willard who was trying to steal second. Fulghum then went on to force a flyout and earn a strikeout to end the top of the first inning.

In the bottom of the inning, North Duplin also got off to a strong start on offense when, with one out, Addy Higginbotham and Reece Outlaw hit back-to-back singles to put runners on first and second with just one out. Just when it appeared as if everything was going in the Rebels favor though, Fulghum hit into a double play to end the inning.

The double play seemed to shift the momentum of the game, and in the top of the second, the first Panthers batter of the inning, Samantha Braddy, immediately got on base with a single. After a strikeout by Londyn Keech, Panthers batter Jorden Clark then put both herself and Braddy in scoring position with a double which Jaden Clark then capitalized on by hitting a 2-RBI single to give her team a 2-0 lead. Later in the inning, Jaden Clark also came home to score when, with two outs, Higginbotham made an error on a groundball from Willard that should have ended the inning but instead resulted in Northside-Pinetown taking a 3-0 lead.

Jaden Clark, who was also the starting pitcher for the Panthers, carried her excellent play over to the circle where she forced two groundouts and earned a strikeout to quickly get out of the bottom of the second inning.

In the top of the third inning, things continued to go downhill for the Rebels when Fulghum, who had been solid throughout their playoff run, began to struggle at the circle, and she gave up a single and then a walk. After a sacrifice bunt by Braddy, Fulghum then hit the next batter she faced, Londyn Keech, to load the bases. Trying to avoid walking another batter, Fulghum left a pitch over the middle of the plate during the next at-bat, and Northside-Pinetown took advantage of that by crushing the ball out of the park for a grand slam to give her team a 7-0 lead.

In the bottom of the fourth inning after forcing a groundout for the first out, Fulghum then walked batter Emaleigh Cherry and almost walked the next batter Isabella Boykin when she began the at-bat by throwing three straight balls. Even though she was able to work the count to 3-2, the favorable count for the batter forced Fulghum to throw another pitch over the middle of the plate, and Boykin was able to take advantage of that by hitting a two-run home run to give the Panthers a 9-0 lead.

Trailing by nine, North Duplin decided to make a change on the mound, and they brought in Ady Spence who had immediate success ending the inning by forcing back-to-back flyouts.

The Rebels also finally found some success at the plate in the bottom of the fourth inning when, with two outs, Marissa Bernal hit a two-run home run to put the Rebels on the scoreboard and cut the Panthers lead to 9-2.

With Spence bringing her A-game on the mound, the momentum continued to head in North Duplin’s favor, and after an excellent top of the fifth inning in which Spence walked just one batter and surrendered no hits, Outlaw cut the Northside-Pinetown lead to 9-5 in the bottom of the inning with a one-out three-run homer.

Ultimately the nine-run lead proved to be too much to overcome though as, after North Duplin failed to score a single run for the rest of the fifth inning as well as the sixth inning, the Panthers put the game away for good by scoring three runs in the seventh inning to win by a final score of 12-5.

North Duplin head coach Jaime Kylis said, after the game, that the loss came down to the Rebels just simply being outplayed by the Panthers, but she doesn’t want to let one loss define an excellent season.

“They were better than us. We had a little bit of a fight here and there, but we just weren’t our best,” Kylis said.

“I think we had a great year, a lot of fun … a lot of great wins, and I’m not going to discredit … the things that we did. I challenge my girls to not look at this and define our season with this loss. It’s a big loss and the worse one of our season for sure, but only our second, and we’ve done some really big things.”

With the loss, North Duplin finished the season with an impressive record of 17-2 overall. Northside-Pinetown improved to 19-4 overall with the win and advanced to the NCHSAA 1A East Regional Championship game.