1999

tral fails in bid ,f rsecond baseball title at Gulf Coast and Louisiana.

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now participated in the state tourna– ment three consecutive years. In addthon to winning the 1998 title, East Central placed second in 1997. Clark and his Diamond Warnor!>· begm Reg10n 23 Tournament action at 1 p.m Thursday against Delgado. East Central is the number-three seed and Delgado is seeded fourth. Other participants are Meridian Community College(No. 1 seed), Gulf Coast(No. 2) Northeast (No.5) and Delta ( o. 6). Clark said sophomore hurler jason Wtlhs (9-4) of Neshoba Central wtll start on the mound agamst Del– gado and Buckley(3-4) will get the nod in game two. "Obviously we will use our bullpen as needed to win each game, which will be a determmmg factor on who wtll start the remammg games." The championship contest in the double-elimination is set for 1 p.m. Sunday All ECCC games will be broadcast by WSST-FM (98.3) in Carthage, katuring veteran sports announcer Mlke Goodwin.

"We rcillly played well in the state tourn.1mcnt, and only made two errors in three games. Defen– sively, '' e played about as well as we could play. We swung the bat ,·er} well friday night against 1'\orthwest and Saturday against ltawamba. But rn the Itawamba game, we could not bunch the hits together; in other words we didnot make hits when we had base run– ners. But then again, Itawamba played as hot as a firecracker and have done so over the past few weeks," satd Clark. Regarding Saturday night's game wrt Gulf Coast, Clark described the atmO!>pherL as being "electric", and added, "we had a huge crowd and a great turnout of Ea:.t Central people. Allen Buckley threw great for about five innings but got into trouble and had to be pulled. But it was great seeing him pitch well again, espe– cially smce he's just a freshman." lncludmg this year's thtrd-place finish, the Dtamond Warriors have

APPEARED IN:

LAKE MESSENGER.______________ SCOTT COUNTY TIMES______ UNION APPEAL _________ WINSTON COUNTY JOURNAL.____ SPIRIT OF MORTON________

CARTHAGINIAN,________ NESHOBA DEMOCRAT ---------------- NEWTON RECORD --------------------- CLARION-LEDGER ·--------------------- MERIDIAN STAR