Uncharted waters: Pirates beat Cleveland, reach 3rd round

LUMBERTON — A history-making team. A record-setting team.

When Halona Sampson struck out her 10th batter of the game to earn the final out in Saturday’s second-round 4A state playoff game, the Pirates wrote a new chapter of program history with a pair of feats that no team before them has accomplished.

With a 2-0 win over Cleveland, Lumberton advanced to the third round for the first time in program history, and by doing so won their 24th game, setting a new program record.

“It feels like a big weight’s off my shoulders, to be honest with you,” Lumberton coach Mackie Register said. “This is the seventh time we’ve been to the second round, and to move to that third round is big. Especially for these seniors; we have six seniors and I told them we’ve been waiting four years for this right here.”

The Pirates’ stellar six-player senior class kept their high-school careers alive for at least one more game, when seventh-seeded Lumberton (24-4) travels to No. 2 Wakefield Tuesday.

“We’re at a loss for words right now, because we’re so excited,” Pirates senior Alona Hanna said. “This is such a big achievement for us right now. Grateful, very grateful.”

“We’ve had a good season,” Sampson said. “We’ve all come together. These are the girls we’ve played with since we were young, and it’s just really good to advance to the third round.”

Sampson pitched a four-hit shutout, with just one walk against her 10 strikeouts, improving to 19-4 on the season.

“Mostly my spins were really on,” Sampson said. “I got some good looks from the inside corner because they didn’t see it coming. And then just really knowing that my team was there for me and knowing if they did hit the ball, I had backup and people that can field the ball, so it took a lot of the pressure off.”

“She came out and she was ready to go, she really was,” Register said. “The first inning, and she just kind of fed on every inning. But it’s not surprising — she did the same thing against Cape Fear. She gets in jams and she shows no emotion; it’s like she’s been there before, she’s done this and nothing fazes her, she goes about her business. … She was killing that outside corner. She was hitting spots and then she’d come in. She was on.”

The two biggest scoring threats for No. 10 Cleveland (14-8) against Sampson came in the third and fifth innings. In the third, Amber Faulkner singled and her courtesy runner was sacrificed to second base; Avery Morgan singled to center field, but the potential game-tying run was out at the plate after a terrific throw by Hanna and tag by Tiara Stueck.

In the fifth, Faulkner walked with one out and Karsyn Hudacky reached on a two-out error, but Sampson struck out the next batter to escape the jam.

Offensively, the Pirates scored a single run in both their first and last turns at bat.

Stueck reached on a fielder’s choice in the first and courtesy runner Macy Jones stole second. When Hanna singled, Jones was initially called out at the plate to end the inning, but the umpires met and changed the call to obstruction on the Rams’ catcher, allowing the run to count and giving the Pirates a 1-0 lead.

“I thought it was a really easy call,” Register said. “The girl was definitely blocking the plate, we had nowhere to slide, she didn’t have the ball and it was kind of one bounce, and then our girl couldn’t slide and didn’t have any portion of the plate she could slide (to).”

“I thought she was blocking the bag, and not a lot of umpires see that, but I’m glad they did see that because every little thing counts and it adds up,” Hanna said.

The Pirates had a runner doubled off of second on a line drive to end the second inning and a caught stealing to lessen a fourth-inning threat.

In the sixth, Stueck reached on an infield error and courtesy runner Mackenzie Register came around to score on another infield error on a ball hit by Hanna.

“Sometimes you’ve just got to put the ball in play and good things can happen,” Mackie Register said. “It’s easy to catch pop-ups and it’s easy to get outs when they strike out, so put the ball in play and put some pressure on their defense. … Anytime you make a run, during that run you’re going to have to have one game where you have a little bit of luck, and I think we had a little luck tonight.”

The run gave Sampson and the Pirates some insurance with three outs to get in the seventh, which ultimately came as Sampson set down the Rams in order.

“It was great, knowing that, hey, we’ve got this, just get the last three outs and we’re good,” Sampson said.

Hanna finished with two hits and an RBI for Lumberton. Aniya Merritt and Cameron Honeycutt also recorded hits for the Pirates.

Izzy Sholar led Cleveland with two hits. Hudacky allowed two unearned runs on four hits with one walk and three strikeouts in the circle for Cleveland.

The Pirates will face a familiar foe in the third round, meeting the Wakefield team that eliminated them in the second round last year.

“We’re looking forward to going up there and playing,” Mackie Register said. “From last year, I thought a couple pitches, a couple plays here and there, that game could’ve been different. I think we’ll be ready for them on Tuesday.”