Members of the Laurinburg Optimist 12-year-old All-Star baseball team are, front row: H.B. Stone, Cody Stewart, Jonathan Bowling, Grant English and Logan House. Back row: Quadrin Williams, Dalton Vann, Alston Wilkerson, Sam Gray, Madison Radford and Rob Cribb. The team finished second in the 12-U District I Tournament at Harper’s Crossroads earlier this month.
Laurinburg received a forfeit win over East Chatham on Thursday, as the Chatham Co. team arrived with only eight players. Laurinburg fell to 1-1 in the tournament with a 9-4 loss to West Chatham on Friday night. The Optimist All Stars allowed just four hits but made multiple errors while falling into the loser's bracket.
Laurinburg would bounce back with a pair of wins on Saturday, blanking Hamlet 10-0 and Broadway 12-0 in a pair of four-inning routs.
Laurinburg needed a pair of wins on Sunday to drag the championship round into the next week. The Optimist All Stars defeated Northview 11-1 in four innings, but fell again to West Chatham, this time by a score of 3-2, to be eliminated from the tournament.
"This loss was a heartbreaker to all 11 players, three coaches and the family members who worked so hard all season to advance to the state tournament,," said Laurinburg Optimist 12-year-old All-Star head coach Dean Cribb, who pointed out that this is the end of the line for this group of players in the Laurinburg Optimist baseball ranks.
Rob Cribb, Grant English, Logan House, Cody Stewart and H.B. Stone were Laurinburg's top performers on the mound in the tournament.
The team's top hitters were: Rob Cribb with a .714 average; Sam Gray with a .600 average and one homer; H.B. Stone, who hit .583 and clocked three dingers; Grant English, whose .571 average and three homers almost mirrored Stone's tournament stats; Dalton Vann, who hit .545 and had one home run; and Cody Stewart, who hit .454 in the tournament for Laurinburg.
As a team, Laurinburg hit .460 (52-for-113) in the tournament.
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