Northside baseball rallies for first win, hands Pack first loss

Published 8:29 am Thursday, March 6, 2025

By Jason O. Boyd

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One of the drawbacks of spring sports is the weather. You never know when it’s gonna make an impact.

That turned out to be a good thing Monday night for Northside’s baseball team and not so much for Washington.

Northside rallied for its first win of the season, scoring seven runs in the final five innings for a 7-6 victory over the Pam Pack. The game was moved from Wednesday to Monday due to the threat of severe weather. That didn’t give either team a lot of preparation time and certainly no practices before the only scheduled clash between Beaufort County rivals this season.

Washington looked good early, jumping to a 5-0 lead. Northside got two back in the third inning, tied it in the fourth, won it in the sixth and held on in the seventh as the Pam Pack had runners at second and third with two outs.

“I’m just so proud of the guys,” Northside coach Parker Boyd said. “They could have easily, down five nothing, they could have laid down and quit like we did at Ayden-Grifton (10-0 loss last week), but they battled back, and it’s a good sign for a really young team to have that kind of resilience at this age.

“I couldn’t be prouder, especially I’m happy for my senior (Ashton Willard). I’m happy for the guys who lifted all out there. That was a special game that some of these kids will never forget the rest of their lives.”

Washington got its first five runs in the second inning on an error, a hit, two wild pitches and beating a throw to first. Northside got two of those runs back on a passed ball and wild pitch.

After Northside tied it at 5-all in the fourth, Washington’s Bryce Williams scored the go-ahead run on a force play. Northside then went ahead when Willard dropped a single into shallow left that plated the go-ahead runs.

Williard, who came on to pitch in relief in the sixth, had Washington runners on second and third before he ended it by catching a comebacker and running to first to tag the bag.

“Yeah, I lost my rhythm, and I tried to find it back, and then (assistant) coach (Michael Craig) came out and talked to me, and calmed me down a little bit. And then I found it back, and just let him hit it right to me, and told (first baseman) Will (Taylor) to get off the bag so I could tag it.

“I’m glad my teammates didn’t give up. They stuck with me throughout the entire thing, and we’re just gonna keep doing this every time now. They got the win, we’ve got our confidence back.”

Washington started the season with a 3-0 record and used nearly every method to reach that mark. In last Thursday’s 9-6 win over New Bern at home, the Pam Pack scored nine runs on just four hits with eight walks and a New Bern error.

Pack coach Will Tyson was disappointed with the outcome on Monday but believes better days are ahead.

“Yeah, we just couldn’t make the simple plays that we needed to make,” Tyson said. Walking too many batters (eight), missed opportunities in the field, a couple errors, and those things bite you. They come back to bite you quick.

And hopefully it’s an eye-opening experience for these guys. They’re not untouchable, they’re vulnerable.”

The win over New Bern was a shot in the arm for a team that has a game Friday at Class 3A power J.H. Rose along with a rematch with New Bern and a tough Eastern Plains Conference schedule that includes Greene Central, which won the Class 2A state title last year, Farmville Central and West Craven.

“Yeah, this was a good team,” Jacob Spivey said of the win over New Bern. “This was a really good win for us because we came off a hard season last year.”

“We’ve been playing together our whole life, so I think we know each other,” Williams said. “We know how we are and what we can do. That always helps us.”

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