Staff report

CHINA GROVE — Carson head coach Kyle Bridges described the entire 2024 baseball season as a roller-coaster ride.

“There have been nights we’ve looked great and there have been nights we’re the Bad News Bears,” Bridges said. “If you’d told me before the season that we’d beat West Rowan twice, would only have played East Rowan once, and still would have four losses in the South Piedmont Conference, I never would have believed it.”

Bridges got to see both the good Carson and bad Carson in the course of seven innings in Friday’s South Piedmont Conference game with Lake Norman Charter.

Carson has been as unpredictable as anyone. The Cougars did beat a stout West Rowan team twice, with maybe their best two games of the season, but Carson also has lost in a league that is very competitive in the middle to Northwest Cabarrus, Robinson and Lake Norman Charter. All three of those teams have aces who can beat you.

On Friday, Carson had to pull out an exciting game to prevent being swept by the Knights of LNC. The Cougars lost a five-run lead but scored in the bottom of the seventh to win 6-5.

Left-handed pitcher Maverick Walters got the Cougars off to a great start, they had the bats going, with Cam Williamson, Jayven Parks and Carson Kirk driving in runs.

“After three innings, we’re up 5-0 and Maverick is throwing the ball as well as he all season,” Bridges said. “We’re still up 5-1 after four, but Maverick hit the wall in the fifth.”

Lake Norman Charter tied it 5-all in the fifth.

“We had all the momentum in the world early and they had all the momentum after they came back,” Bridges said. “But then Corbin Hales was good on the mound and our defense made some game-saving plays.”

Hales, Carson’s relief ace all season, was able to put up zeroes in the sixth and seventh.

Colin Weathers pitched into the bottom of the seventh for Lake Norman Charter.

Carson put two men on base in the seventh before Parks hit a ball that caromed off a relief pitcher. He scrambled after it and fired to first, but the throw got away, and Carson owned a walk-off win.

Lake Norman Charter made five errors.

Carson had six hits and made one error in a win that was dedicated to the late Dalton Gay and his family. Gay would have been part of Carson’s baseball team and this graduating class.

Williamson, Kirk, Hales, Will Bradshaw, TJ Harris and Daxton Savage had hits for the Cougars (10-8, 8-4). Carson now is a game up on Lake Norman Charter and owns the tiebreaker with West Rowan, but Carson also has a game left with East Rowan, which is headed for the league championship, so second place is still very much up in the air.

Carson plays at South Rowan, another dangerous team, on Tuesday.