CHERRYVILLE – There were over 90 teams in North Carolina who participated in the 2024 American Legion Baseball season, but only one team came away with the state championship and that was Wayne County Post 11 thanks to their defeat of Wilmington Post 10 by a score of 7-2 on July 24.
The state championship win was the first in the 60-year history of the Post 11 baseball program, and head coach Adam Pate said that the win was due, not only to the players on the current team, but the coaches and players that came before them.
“It means a lot (to win the state championship),” Pate said. “Obviously these kids here today and the families are super excited, but there’s so many Post 11 players before today that this is for: guys that were on runner-up teams or guys that didn’t make the state tournament but kept the program healthy and strong.”
Coming into the game, Wayne County had a huge advantage over Wilmington as they held a 4-0 record in the double-elimination tournament compared to Wilmington’s 3-1 record which meant that they would need to beat Wilmington just once to become the champions while Wilmington would need to defeat them twice to claim the title.
Even with a one-game cushion in hand, the Post 11 players didn’t want to take the chance of going to a winner-take-all final game though, and they looked to go ahead and seal their championship victory.
Wayne County got off to an excellent start in the game on defense thanks to their starting pitcher Casey Culbreth who opened up the first inning with a quick three and out where he forced a groundout and a flyout and then earned a strikeout.
The Wayne County offense was unable to help Culbreth out with any runs in the bottom of the first inning, but after another shutout inning by Culbreth in the second, the Post 11 batters found their rhythm, and thanks to a throwing error which allowed Miles Hamm to get on base and back-to-back singles by Baines Raynor and Connor Radford, they loaded the bases with one out.
With the bases loaded, Wayne County then scored the first run of the game when Lawson Tyndall was walked which scored Hamm from third with just one out. Post 11 went on to score two more runs in the inning to take a 3-0 lead as Wyatt Lassiter hit a sacrifice fly to score Raynor from third, and Davis Albert hit a single to score Radford.
Wilmington, who have proven themselves to be one of the best teams in the state this season, wasn’t going to go down without a fight though, and after Wayne County pitcher Casey Culbreth opened up the top of the fourth inning with a strikeout, Wilmington batter Luke Vargo earned a walk and Cameron Matthews hit a double which put two runners in scoring position. During the next at-bat, both Vargo and Matthews then came home to score as Patrick Boldt knocked in both runners with an RBI single to cut the Wayne County lead to 3-2.
Just like all season though, when Wayne County needed to score a run— they did, and in the bottom of the fourth inning after Connor Radford was hit by a pitch and eventually advanced to third on a sacrifice bunt, he came home to score thanks to an RBI single by Lassiter. After stealing second and advancing to third on a throwing error, Lassiter then also came home to score on a Davis Albert sacrifice fly to give his team a 5-2 lead.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, Tyndall then put the game away for good. With the bases loaded, he hit a two-RBI double with one out to give Wayne County a 7-2 lead. That would also prove to be the game’s final score as relief pitcher Gabe Adams came on to pitch two shutout innings where he earned one strikeout and gave up just one hit to close out the game.
Culbreth, who finished as the game’s winning pitcher, gave up two runs and three hits and earned three strikeouts in five innings pitched.
With the win, Post 11 not only clinched the state championship, but they improved to 33-8 overall this season and advanced to the regional playoffs where they will face other state champions from across the southeast region from Aug. 7-Aug. 11 at McCrary Park in Asheboro for a chance to go Nationals.
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