Youth taking its toll on Kingston in early going

By GOOSE LINDSAY

rcsports@bellsouth.net

Veteran teams can often overcome mistakes and find ways to win.

Unfortunately for Kingston head coach Bruce Robinette, he doesn’t have a team with a lot of experience this year and his squad is still trying to learn from their mistakes.

Monday evening, the Jackets made some mistakes in the field and the result was an 11-4 loss at Anderson County.

“We’ve got to come out and make the routine plays and we didn’t do that today,” Kingston head coach Bruce Robinette said. “We’re so young that any mistakes we make really hurts us. Hopefully, by May (district tournament) we can make those plays.”

Kingston fell behind early as the Mavericks scored three runs on two hits, two walks and an error in the bottom of the first inning.

Anderson County added to their lead with single runs in the second and third innings to make the score 5-0, but the fourth inning would see the Jackets make their biggest mistake of the night.

With a runner on first and no outs, the Mavericks hit what appeared to be a double play ball on the infield, but the ball was thrown away at second and instead of having none on and two outs, the Mavericks had a rally started that didn’t end until six runs had crossed the plate to make the score 11-0.

All, however, wasn’t bad for the Jackets as Kingston scored four runs in the top of the fifth inning while holding the Mavericks scoreless down the stretch.

Chancey Miller started Kingston’s fifth inning rally with a two-out walk. Tyler Adams followed with a double then Luke Barnett drove in Kingston’s first run of the game with a single.

The big blow of the inning came next when Bradley Mitchell launched a Maverick offering well over the wall in left field to make the score 11-4.

Kingston, however, couldn’t keep the rally going in the final two innings of play.

Kingston played the Mavericks again on Tuesday. After Tuesday, the Jackets will host Sweetwater at home on Friday and Greenback at home on Saturday.