Scotland baseball shutout by Purnell Swett in home opener

LAURINBURG —The Scotland baseball team dropped their home opener to the Purnell Swett Rams by a score of 5-0 on Thursday night at McCoy Field. The Scots fall to 1-1 on the season with the loss while the Rams improve to 1-1 with the victory.

Purnell Swett got the scoring started in their half of the first inning thanks to a two-RBI single with two outs from Joseden Oxendine, which scored both Camden Hunt and Easton Oxendine. Scotland appeared to have gotten out of the inning without harm during Easton’s at-bat but committed a fielding error that kept the inning alive for the Rams. Kaden Hunsucker would lead off the bottom of the first for Scotland with a single but he would eventually be stranded at second when the inning ended.

The Rams added another run in the top of the third thanks to a pair of Scotland fielding errors to start the inning. Chandon Sanderson hit a pop fly that dropped to the ground and allowed him to reach third base before Mason Brewer hit a ground ball on the infield and managed to reach first safely thanks to another fielding error, scoring Sanderson in the process.

Purnell Swett would get their final two runs in their half of the fourth. Gavin Jones was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning, then advanced to second on a groundout and scored on an RBI single from Conley Jacobs. Jacobs then scored thanks to another RBI single from Sanderson.

It was a tough night for Scotland offensively, who only had one hit in the game (Hunsucker’s single to lead off the bottom of the first). The only other base runners the Scots had were Maddox Locklear in the bottom of the first on a hit by pitch and Garrett Manning, who reached on an error in the bottom of the seventh. Otherwise Scotland went down in order during each offensive inning.

Another problem the Scots had was with errors on defense as they committed five in Thursday’s contest. Head Coach Ricky Schattauer was not at all pleased with how one miscue continued to negatively impact the Scots in the form of more errors repeatedly happening.

“It was kind of a snowball effect of what carried over from last year where we would make one error and can’t get past it,” Schattauer said. “That can’t happen, we have more experienced varsity players and we cannot let one error turn into another and then another which is what happened tonight.”

One bright spot for the Scots was the performance of Manning on the mound. Manning started the game for Scotland and gave them six innings of five-run ball, though only two were earned and had six strikeouts. Schattauer was pleased with Manning’s start and thought he did enough to give the team an opportunity to win.

“Manning gave us a chance to win,” Schattauer said. “In the books it’s two earned runs but in our books it’s only one earned run because we missed multiple fly balls in foul territory which ran his pitch count up and gave them another chance to hit the ball.”

The Scots will look to rebound on Tuesday night when they start conference play against the Hoke County Bucks. First pitch from McCoy Field is scheduled for 7 p.m.

Schattauer’s message to his team heading into their conference opener was simple: flush this game and move forward. While losing is never a good thing, Schattauer is hoping that an early season loss can be a learning point for his group for the rest of the season as opposed to suffering a similar fate to 2024 when the Scots started 6-1 before faltering down the stretch.

“I’m looking forward to next week, I told them that when we take off this uniform it has to be washed and away,” Schattauer said. “I’m glad it happened early, hopefully we can bounce back with Hoke starting on Tuesday and get a win.”