North Delta holds on against Lee Academy

By Brad Greer
After sleepwalking offensively  through the first three innings of their district clash against Lee Academy, the North Delta bats woke up from a slumber in a big way by exploding for an eight-run fourth inning before holding off a late Colt charge to claim a 11-8 victory Thursday.
The Green Wave evened their record at 9-9 and 3-4 in district play despite committing six errors. North Delta led 10-4 after five complete innings before Lee scored four runs in the final two innings and loaded the bases with one out in the seventh only to have Wave closer Luke Daniels retire the next two batters to record the save.
“We faced a kid from Bayou that was throwing in the lower 80’s then came out today and saw Lee’s pitcher that was around the lower-70’s so it took our batters an inning or two to get their timing down. We squared up a few hard hit balls early on that weren’t falling, but there in the fourth every hit seemed to find a hole,” said North Delta head coach Bill McGee.
North Delta sent 11 batters to the plate in the fourth inning rally as Lige Simmerman got the hit parade started with a single then scored on a Daniels’ triple to cut the lead in half.
Brandon Henson and Hunter Houston both singled sandwiched between walks by Zach Adams and Forrest Pierce. Luke Noah followed with a two-run single coupled with Cole Devazier’s RBI single that broke the game open. Simmerman ended the scoring with a sacrifice fly to plate Devazier.
Noah picked up the pitching win by going 4.2 innings in relief of Green Wave starter Adams who gave up three runs on four hits in 1.1 innings.
With all the momentum now on their side, Noah got out of a huge jam in the fifth as the Colts loaded the bases with no outs, but came away empty handed  were a pair of fly outs and a force out at home ended the inning. Lee left  the bases loaded five times including the last four innings in a row.
“Luke (Noah) has been our workhorse nearly all season. He is a returning starter from last year as a sophomore and he really gritted his teeth out there today and competed very well,” said McGee.
The Green Wave added to their lead  at 10-4 as Jones Montgomery led off the fifth by getting hit by a pitch then later scored on Henson’s flair to right.
Lee closed the margin to 10-6 with a pair of runs in the sixth before North Delta answered with a single run in the bottom half of the frame as Devazier singled, stoled  second, advanced to third on a wild pitch then scored on Simmerman’s double.
The Colts loaded the bases with one out in the seventh after scoring two runs to pull within 11-8 before Daniels retired the final two batters.
Noah, Devazier, Henson and Simmerman collected two hits for North Delta while Daniels tripled and Houston singled.
North Delta (JV)-5 Lee-0
Tyler Holland and Drake Barton combined on a one-hit shutout as the Green Wave were victorious in four innings.
Drew McCool doubled and drove in two runs while Lane Harper, Jack Ray, and Barton singled. Ian Cole, Jordan Cox, Eli Robb, Harper  and Barton all scored.
North Delta visits Greenville St. Joe Tuesday in a varsity double header at 4 p.m before closing out the regular season by hosting Kirk Thursday.