Covington County came out blasting at the 2014 Babe Ruth 16-18 Southeast Regional Baseball Tournament on Wednesday, but lost two games straight to get knocked out of the tournament in pool play.

County beat Startown Optimist, N.C. (West), 11-1 on Wednesday, but then fell 10-0 to Greater Fairfax, Va. on Thursday and then 7-0 to Marshall County, Tenn. yesterday.

Covington County coach Manuel Owens said after the first-game win, the team didn’t play well, especially out in the field.

“We couldn’t put anything together,” Owens said. “We played awful on defense the last two games. That’s really the difference in the ball games was our defensive play. You can’t give them four or five or six outs an inning. You’ve got to make the plays.”

Another aspect of the game that plagued the local baseball All-Stars was hitting.
Covington County managed to put together three hits in the loss against Marshall County and around four hits against Greater Fairfax.

While there may have not been many hits, Owens said there weren’t many strikeouts.
“But when we hit it, it was right to somebody,” he said. “We’ve had that happen to us a lot this year. We haven’t had many strikeouts.”

Marshall County 7, Covington County 0
Austin Worley went 2-for-3 to lead county; and Jeffrey Fuller went 1-for-2.
Marshall County scored three runs in the third inning, two runs in the fourth and two runs in the sixth.

Greater Fairfax 10, Covington County 0
Greater Fairfax took a 1-0 lead to the third inning, where the Virginia team scored two runs to take a lead it wouldn’t give up.
Virginia tacked on six runs in the fourth and added one more in the sixth to get the mercy-rule win
Johnny Owens went 2-for-2; Todd Wright went 1-for-2; and Jerran Williams went 1-for-2 to lead Covington County.

Covington County 11, Startown Optimist 1
Covington County’s Hunter Odom and Brennan Head combined for a no hitter on Wednesday to help lead their team to a 10-run victory over the team from North Carolina.
The county team put together 12 hits in its 11-run game.
Williams went 3-for-4 with six RBIs to lead Covington Coujnty. Worley and Beau Spivey went 3-for-4 each; and Owens went 2-for-4.
Owens said the tournament has gone well from an attendance stand point, but he would’ve liked to have seen more local folks attend.
“I don’t think we’ve had a big turnout from the local people as we were hoping for,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve had anymore than folks from Virginia’s had here. That’s kind of what I think of our support we’ve had here locally.”
Tournament action continues today with the double elimination bracket portion of the southeast regional.
“The next games are going to be some real good baseball,” Owens said.
Games today start at 10 a.m.