NC baseball’s Woods nearly tosses no

Jun 08, 2023

AUXVASSE -- With 12 mph+ winds heading toward home, a pitcher's dual occurred between the North Callaway Thunderbirds and New Bloomfield Wildcats.

Scoring all the contest's runs in the bottom of the sixth inning, North Callaway beat New Bloomfield 4-0 on Senior Night Tuesday at North Callaway's baseball field.

Thunderbirds senior Davis Woods had quite the game on the night North Callaway honored him and the team's six other seniors.

North Callaway's Woods had a no-hitter going for 6⅔ innings (perfect game for five innings), and he drove in the game-deciding runs in the sixth.

Earning the complete-game shutout victory, the Thunderbirds' Woods allowed no runs on one hit and no walks while striking out six in seven innings.

"Actually, early on, I was kind of surprised at how efficient he was able to be because 0-0 count, he was behind first-time eight out of 1o guys, but he was able to pitch No. 2 get us up back in the count and pitch to contact early on in some counts, it kept his page count down," North Callaway coach Zeth Lavy said. "But I thought once he once he kind of started throwing strikes one, he was real efficient, pretty dominant."

New Bloomfield's Eli Bailey also kept the opposition's hitters at bay. The Wildcat allowed no runs on two hits while striking out seven in 3⅓ innings. The freshman's outing was cut short due to reaching New Bloomfield coach Justin Forsythe's pitch count for him."

Bailey was at his best in the third, punching out North Callaway in order on 15 pitches -- the count was 2-2 before each strikeout.

"I thought he like came in and threw great," Forsythe said. "Eli has turned into our top arm, and that's great to see, especially from a freshman out there who does not look like a freshman on the mound. He threw the ball at the plate, gave us a chance to win, played good defense behind him. When we're when we get ahead in counts, we can pitch off some things that our staff has and take advantage of some things that we do really well as a staff. And he did that tonight."

Neither team recorded multiple hits until the bottom of the sixth -- the only time it happened -- when the Thunderbirds plated four on three hits, a walk and a hit-by-pitch.

Senior Jordan Fishburn led the sixth with a single to the Wildcats' first baseman, then New Bloomfield put another senior on when it walked Braydn O'Neal in the next at-bat.

The Wildcats notched their first out in the sixth on an infield fly before loading the bases by hitting Kyle Pennell.

With the pads full, Woods made his Senior Night more special by putting North Callaway ahead 2-0 on his two-RBI single that went between New Bloomfield's first and second baseman and into shallow right.

"Especially coming off last night, the zeros kind of start stacking up, and you start pressing a little bit," Lavy said. "I thought we did a good job of a few veteran guys go through the lineup there in that sixth inning and get the job. He's the guy that's really come on offensively this year after kind of having hot starts and then fizzled off the last couple here. He's been a consistent, solid part of our lineup."

During the next at-bat, Pennell scored as New Bloomfield's catcher attempted to pick off pinch-runner Caleb Sheets at second. In that same plate appearance, Sheets reached home when Carter Moore hit a sacrifice fly to left.

While Moore's RBI sacrifice fly capped the scoring, the offense didn't stop there for North Callaway.

Pinch-hitting for senior starter AJ Siegel, the Thunderbirds' Sam Pezold doubled past the Wildcats' right fielder into deep right-center for the contest's lone extra-base hit.

New Bloomfield got the final out of the sixth right after that, and it had one more frame at the plate to attempt a comeback.

However, Woods maintained his dominance for North Callaway, getting the leadoff hitter to groundout to second and the next to fly out to right.

Gavin Thomas, one of the Wildcats' better hitters this season, erased Woods's no-hit bid by singling down the left-field line.

"Give (Woods) credit," Forsythe said. "He allowed his defense to play behind him. Got ahead in counts. Got that first-pitch strike, which is useful in high school baseball, and just threw a game. I'm totally going on a limb here but probably his best game of the season. And that's a good time for them, North Callaway and himself."

Following that at-bat, North Callaway's Woods regrouped, getting the following batter to pop out to shortstop O'Neal, a Columbia College commit, for the final out.

Speaking of commitments: Matthew Weber, North Callaway boys basketball's all-time career scoring leader, signing to play basketball for Mineral Area College became public knowledge for the first time during the Senior Night ceremony.

After the presentation, Lavy shared what the Thunderbirds' seven seniors brought to the school in their four years at North Callaway.

"Just the group altogether; we got a lot a couple new newcomers new faces, but a lot of guys that have seen a ton of situations together, and I think that has come up big in some games, where maybe last year we give up a big inning, and it snowballs into three innings," Lavy said. "There have been several times this year where we've kind of had some hiccups, and then we put a stop to it and respond the next inning and go on to win the game, which we haven't done the last couple of years. So that's a direct translation of those guy's leadership and what they've been able to bring to us this year."

North Callaway finished the regular season 14-8, with some of its highlights being a victory against state-ranked Hallsville, a second-place finish in the Versailles/California Turf War and falling just a game short of winning the Eastern Missouri Conference -- it would've been a sweep of the baseball conference titles by the Callaway schools this season if that happened.

Getting postseason play underway, No. 4 seed North Callaway will face No. 5 seed Missouri Military Academy (9-8) in the Class 3 District 7 tournament opening round at 5 p.m. Friday at South Callaway's baseball field.

"We're definitely not in a position to look past anybody," Lavy said. "And from what I've heard, MMA has a guy with a pretty good arm. We're totally focused on Friday right now. If we get through that, we will shift our focus on Monday, but that's how you get snake bitten is by looking ahead and not taking care of business. We're gonna respect our opponent and do what we have to prepare for that game and hopefully take care of business Friday."

With a young squad, New Bloomfield had a down year, going 7-16. While that was the case, the Wildcats had a couple of memorable games: beating district/conference opponent Linn in the "battle of the Wildcats" with a football-like score of 16-15 and upsetting Kansas City -- city, not a suburb -- private school Pembroke Hill 11-10 in eight innings in the Russellville Baseball Tournament.

Hosting the Class 2 District 8 tournament, No. 3 seed New Bloomfield takes on No. 6 seed New Haven (1-20) in the opening round at 3 p.m. Friday at Rod Haley Field, weather permitting. According to Forsythe, the game could be moved to Southern Boone or Jefferson City if New Bloomfield's field conditions aren't good enough.

"We're gonna challenge ourselves so that we are prepared come district time," Forsythe said. "We're not gonna see anything in district play that we haven't saw all year. We know that we'll be prepared for it. We'll make some adjustments. Continue to play that strong defense that we played most of the year. Look for some timely hitting and hopefully come out with a win or two or make a run at something."

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