Falcons blank Rams

By Rob Craig
Published in Sports on April 19, 2007 1:48 PM

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PIKEVILLE -- It was only fitting that the Charles B. Aycock softball team ate donuts at the end of their non-conference game against Greene Central.

The Golden Falcons held the Rams to only donuts on the scoreboard against the pitching duo of Julia Lancaster and Emily Jordan as they blanked Greene Central 6-0 on Wednesday night.

Lancaster was simply dominant in her four innings of work -- recording strikeouts on 11 of 12 outs.

"I can't think of any time (I've ever done that before)," said Lancaster. "I knew that Greene Central was a tough team so I came out here and did my best."

Lancaster (7-4) pitched four innings while allowing three hits and no walks in addition to her plentiful strikeouts.

"Julia's tremendous out there," said Aycock coach David West. "When she gets on a roll, it's hard to do anything against her offensively."

Jordan mopped up with three scoreless innings and four strikeouts to pick up her first save of the season. It was the first time all year West has used his two pitchers in one game.

"They responded and combined for a shutout," said West. "So it worked out well for us. Overall, this was an extremely successful night."

The experiments in the lineup didn't stop with Aycock's two aces. West would try a variety of players at new positions and had instant success.

Jasmine Dobbin, Jazzmine Lee, Leiren Tillman, Rusti Talton and Anna Sullivan all tried their hand at a position foreign to them outside of practice and all played flawlessly in the field.

"For us to be able to come in here and experiment like we did, with people at new positions against a good team, says a lot about our team," said West. "We wanted to do that to get us ready to see what we can do a little later down the line. This was an excellent all-around team effort."

The Rams, however, struggled in every area, except for pitching where Jessica Moore had a quality outing, but was victimized by her defense. Five Greene Central errors led to three unearned runs.

In the bottom of the second, a throwing error by catcher Blair Carraway scored Shelly Lancaster for the game's first run.

The Golden Falcons would strike again in the third inning when Leigh Smith would double home Lee and Julia Lancaster to make it 3-0.

Two more runs came home in the fifth inning on two-out RBI doubles by Talton and Shelly Lancaster to give Aycock a 5-0 lead.

"We've been a good two-out hitting team all year," said West. "We're making good contact with the ball and we've got to keep doing that. We had some real shots going into the outfield tonight."

Two Greene Central errors in the inning directly resulted in the runs.

"We definitely didn't play our best game tonight," said Greene Central coach Kim Jones. "We have to save everything for Friday since we have a big conference game, so hopefully we got everything out of our system tonight."

Going up against Lancaster and Jordan, the Rams stood no shot for a possible comeback.

The Rams mustered just four hits against the duo and only once got a runner as far as third base.

"Our bats were not here," Jones said.

Hitting wasn't a problem for the Aycock hitters.

Shelly Lancaster would finish 2-for-3 with an RBI while Talton added an RBI double and Smith had her two-run double.

Both teams will return to conference play on Friday. Greene Central, which fell to 8-8 overall will next travel to North Lenoir while Aycock improves to 14-5 and will be at Wilson Hunt.

"Overall, this was one of our better games," said West. "We're getting ready for the end of the season here and the heart and aggressiveness that these girls are showing is great to see."

Greene Central 000 000 0 -- 0 4 5

C.B. Aycock 012 021 0 -- 6 7 0

Leading Hitters -- Greene Central -- Megan Lovett 2-3. C.B. Aycock -- Shelly Lancaster 2-3, 2B, R, RBI; Leigh Smith 1-3, 2B, 2 RBI; Rusti Talton 1-3, 2B, R, RBI.

LOB -- Greene Central 5, C.B. Aycock 4. SB -- S. Lancaster, Dobbin. CS -- Moore.

IP H R ER BB SO

Greene Central

Moore (L) 6 7 6 3 2 6

C.B. Aycock

J. Lancaster (W, 7-4) 4 3 0 0 0 11

Jordan (S, 1) 3 1 0 0 0 4

HBP -- by Jordan (Moore).