Luray rocks Wilson

FISHERSVILLE — Wilson Memorial had Luray in a stalemate, holding onto a 1-1 tie against Shenandoah’s No. 1 team. After battling for five innings a couple of Wilson mistakes turned into an eight-run Bulldog inning that led to a 10-2 Luray win.
“Six out of seven innings we played with them, but a couple of mistakes early in [the fifth] just snowballed,” said Wilson coach Derek McDaniel. “That just busted it open.”
The Green Hornets carried the tie into the fifth inning, facing the bottom of the Bulldog lineup. Two infield errors put Luray’s T.J. Noser and Chad Duncan on first and second and a Lucas Dickson single loaded the bases, starting Wilson’s downhill slide.
Johnny VanWyck hit a double to bring in Noser and Duncan and Jeremy Leak brought in Dickson with a single. Every Bulldog player scored in the inning except Leak as Luray batted through the lineup to grab a 9-1 lead.
“We are not a good team,” McDaniel said. “I’m not being negative to my kids, because we are not a good team. We don’t make the plays we need to make, and good teams do that.”
Luray scored its first run in the first inning after VanWyck hit a single and stole second then moved to third on a throwing error. VanWyck scored on another infield error.
The Green Hornets amassed six errors in the game, a trend that McDaniel hopes to stop soon.
“I use the word all the time — mental midgets,” McDaniel said. “It’s the same thing at the plate. The umpire calls something; what are you going to do scream, holler, cuss jump up and down? What are you going to do? You can’t change it. I told my guys, ‘Look it’s a big zone today, you know early in the count you get a pitch you have to hit … that’s baseball’.”
Wilson knotted the game in the third when Weston Cash scored on a Roberto Pugliese single. The only other Hornet run came in the fifth when Cash crossed the plate again, this time on a Gage Staton sacrifice fly.
Wilson’s meltdown in the fifth inning continued a pattern that had plagued the young Hornet squad all season.
“We’ve had so many of these games where one or two plays makes the difference,” McDaniel said. “If you want different results you have to change the efforts, and I don’t care what you do in life, it’s the same.”
Luray will take on Buffalo Gap tonight for the top spot in the Shenandoah District and Wilson will travel to Riverheads on Friday.