The Poplarville Hornets baseball team began the season 1-0 after a large 12-3 win over Richland Rangers on Tuesday night.

 

“We didn’t string a bunch of hits but we did manufacture runs. We kind of took what the other team gave us,” said Poplarville Baseball Head Coach Slade Jones.

 

The Hornets shut out the Rangers through five innings. They scored four runs in the first inning, one in the second inning, and another four in the third inning. The Rangers scored there three runs all in the fifth inning. In the sixth inning the Hornets added three more runs to the score. The Rangers weren’t able to score in the seventh inning, which gave the Hornets a 12-3 win.

 

What stood out in Tuesday’s performance for Jones was the new faces that he has in the lineup.

 

“They did a pretty good job of doing exactly what we needed of them to do…It was about those new faces for us… a lot of those runs came from manufacturing runs from the younger kids in our lineup,” said Jones.

 

Jones encourages the younger players in the line up to continue doing what it takes to be productive, and let go of the individual results of the game.

 

“We want them to grow into full time players for us, and there were a couple out there that looked like they had a chance to do that,” said Jones.

 

Next the Hornets will play in the Greene County Tourney in Green County. The game is scheduled to play on Feb. 17 at 7 p.m.