Emerson Rugama, Taylor Hall’s 15 combined strikeouts fuel Northside’s doubleheader sweep of Spalding

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Northside senior Emerson Rugama threw 10 strikeouts in a 5-1 Game 2 victory over Spalding. (Clay Brown/HHJ)

WARNER ROBINS — It wasn’t the prettiest, but you can’t be mad at a pair of wins was the general sentiment of Northside head coach Joey Walker’s postgame huddle.

The Eagles (3-2) swept their Tuesday doubleheader against Spalding (1-4) by scores of 6-5 and 5-1, the latter of which featured seniors Emerson Rugama and Taylor Hall striking out a combined 15 Jaguars.

The second game was the better effort of the two. The offense produced more on its own without relying on walks or Spalding misplays, though it still wasn’t up to Walker’s standards.

There were too many pop ups and the approach at the plate wasn’t as good as it had been in practice the previous day according to Walker. With the Jaguars’ pitchers lacking velocity, he expected more.

“Offensively we came in hitting like .355 as a team, but today we were kind of silent,” Walker said. “I think that we are at a spot where we need to [gain] a little more maturity as a hitter. Be willing to take what they give us, be able to drive the ball the other way, be able to do a few more things.”

The phrase, “do a job” is said frequently by a lot of teams. That can mean laying down a bunt or putting the ball on the ground to advance runners. Or, staying in the box and drawing a hit-by-pitch.

“We’ve been climbing this mountain for a couple of years now. We’re at a spot now where we think we’re pretty competitive,” He continued. “But the guys [have] got to be maybe a little less selfish and a little more, ‘pass the baton to the next guy’ instead of trying to hit the two-run bomb all the time.”

The Eagles drew eight walks in Game 1, but all six of their runs were driven in by various members of the lineup.

Daniel Valdes, a senior, pitched six innings and threw 108 pitches to go for eight strikeouts and two walks. A turbulent first inning allowed four runs, but after a coach encouraged him to fill the zone and let the defense worry about any contact he had a much steadier game.

Hall’s ground out in the fourth broke the tie and Caden Nelson was walked to add another run in the fifth for good measure.

“We lean on them hard. They know it’s four seniors and a bunch of young guys,” Walker said of his four seniors. “They have really high expectations for their senior year. They know they’ve been working towards something a little special for them, and they embrace it. I’m trying to work on some servant leadership…When we get to region play, I mean the pitching’s not quite set, but we know who’s gonna get a lot of innings.”

Northside still has six non-region games before they hit the region schedule with arguably the toughest opponent in 2-5A — Houston County.

Getting a doubleheader in early helps get the cadence of those region doubleheaders down, among other things.

“People don’t think [about conditioning in baseball], but our two football guys were coming out about to cramp up. They got too much muscle maybe, I don’t know,” Walker joked. “Jeremiah [Rozier] and Jaxson [Rowe], we almost had to bench them both in the last couple innings because they were in there drinking pickle juice and getting stretched out.”

“Just experiencing that, being able to set up the pitching and also being able to teach guys to have a short memory, especially when the first game was really kind of ugly,” Walker said. “The second game wasn’t a whole lot better, but they were able to refocus and get a slightly more expected result.”