PEARL RIVER — Franklinton was defeated by Pearl River, 3-1 and 6-0, in the opening two games of their best-of-three regional round contests on the road Friday and last Saturday.
Friday’s game was the 3-1 contest.
Jared Jenkins singled and scored a run.
Wyatt Verret and Jordan McKenzie each singled.
Trent Varnado drove in the run.
The game was scoreless through five innings. No. 22 Franklinton went ahead 1-0 with a run in the sixth, but sixth-seeded Pearl River tallied three runs in its half before the Demons were unable to score in the seventh.
In Saturday afternoon’s game, Pearl River, which batted in the top of the innings, did not have a big scoring inning, but continued to put tack on runs.
Pearl River scored the game’s opening run in the first inning.
Matt Charbonnet was hit by a pitch. He went to third when Caleb Dreux reached on a fielder’s choice throwing error. Charbonnet tallied on Dylan Kavanaugh’s sacrifice fly to make it 1-0.
It stayed that way until the fourth inning when Pearl River posted three runs in the fourth inning.
Ricky Jessup walked with two outs before Preston Matthews reached on an error and Charbonnet was hit. Dreux’s RBI walk plated Jessup to make it 2-0. Kavanaugh drove home Matthews and Charbonnet with a two-run single for a 4-0 lead through five innings.
Pearl River scored on a first-and-third play in the sixth. Jessup was on first and Justin Dean was at third. Jessup took off and Dean took off for home during the rundown and scored for a 5-0 game.
Pearl River added one more in the sixth.
Charbonnet reached on an error and was balked to second before moving to third on Dreux’s bunt single. Charbonnet scored the final run on Kavannaugh’s sacrifice fly.
Dreux was tough on the mound.
He held Franklinton without a hit until McKenzie broke up the no-hitter with two outs in the seventh. Varnado then reached on an error, sending pinch runner A.J. Magee to third, but the Demons were unable to tally.
Dreux threw a complete-game shutout, allowing just the one hit with seventh strikeouts, a hit by pitch and no walks.
Franklinton had two more base runners besides seventh inning. Richard Berry was hit and Jared Jenkins reached on a strike three wild pitch.
“It seemed to be a typical game this season,” Franklinton coach Jeff Tageant said, after Saturday’s game. “We really kept up with freebies a lot this year, which are walks and hit by pitch and errors. I think one inning, we gave them four. That’s where they put the three-spot up and we had some terrible at-bats.
“I kept up today with just easy at-bats and probably 90 percent of our at-bats were just easy outs for them — if it wasn’t a strikeout, it was just a lazy groundball or a lazy fly ball. We’ve got a lot of work to do, we’re not going to give up, we‘re going to keep playing this summer and using these other guys, but I’m proud of our five seniors.”
“It was a very, very tough season, but these guys never gave up, kept pushing hard, kept trying to get better and sometimes things don’t work out.”
Franklinton’s five seniors were Richard Berry, Nate Bracey, Jenkins, Varnado and Wyatt Verret.