THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 8, 1996 TAG: 9606080297
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMI FRANKENBERRY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BRISTOL, VA. LENGTH: 38 lines
Nansemond River's baseball team has waited a year to come here. And though the Warriors are only seconds from the Tennessee line, they aren't here to check out the mountains or the music. They're here to finish a job they didn't last season.
Nansemond River, which blasted Broad Run 12-1 on Thursday night in a semifinal, will meet Virginia High tonight at 7 at DeVault Stadium in a bid for its first Group AA state baseball championship.
The Warriors (21-4) lost last year in a semifinal to eventual state champ Courtland.
``Last year, I don't think we realized how far we were,'' sophomore Chip Runyon said after pitching a complete game on Thursday. ``This year, we know.''
Said senior Larry Artis, ``This is the first time we've been (in a state final), and we've been focusing on what we had to do to get to our goal.''
Getting here - a circuitous 400 miles from Suffolk, according to a road atlas - took more than a couple hours on a bus.
The Warriors endured close to four hours on the bus getting to their game against Broad Run in Ashburn on Thursday. Then, after a 7:30 a.m. wakeup call Friday, they were back on the road for Bristol, another eight hours away.
``That's a lot of traveling,'' Nansemond River coach Phil Braswell said. ``We left Suffolk at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, went all the way up near Washington, D.C., and here we are. It makes it rough.''
After Thursday's 13-hit game, the Warriors would have been wise to use the time to rest. They wore out four Broad Run pitchers in the game and sent 13 batters to the plate in the fourth inning. Broad Run, which had scored 28 runs in the regional tournament, managed just one on six hits against Runyon.
``That was a high-powered offense,'' Braswell said. ``We beat them at their own game. We'd been hitting the ball decent, but everybody did their part.''
Said Artis, one of five Warriors with two hits, ``When we get pumped up, it's hard to beat us unless we beat ourselves.'' by CNB