By GRAHAM POWELL
Leader sportswriter
The Cabot Senior American Legion team split a doubleheader at Russellville on Saturday, and traveled to Faulkner County Monday night where it beat Conway 7-4 in extra innings.
Saturday’s games were played at the Arkansas Tech baseball field, and Russellville won the first game 5-1. Cabot, however, got a dominant performance from Adam Hicks on the hill in game two, which helped the Centennial Bank team win the second game by the final score of 3-0.
Hicks threw a perfect game through the first six innings of game two, but Russellville got a base hit on the first pitch of the seventh inning to break the chance at a perfect game.
Even though Hicks didn’t get the perfect game, he completed the game on the mound and earned a shutout victory.
“Adam Hicks threw a perfect game going into the seventh inning,” said Cabot coach Chris Gross, “and then somebody talked about it and jinxed it because the first pitch of the inning was a base hit. But we ended up pulling away 3-0.
“He threw 71 pitches – a complete game. He was hitting his spots and he was just having fun, which doesn’t happen a lot with the boys these days. Not all of them have fun anymore, but he did really well.”
In Monday’s win at Conway, the game was tied at 4-4 going into extra innings, but Cabot added its three runs in the top of the eighth while keeping the host team’s bats at bay in the bottom part of the extra inning to leave Faulkner County with a win.
Cabot used three different pitchers in that game. Grayson Cole started the game. He was later relieved by Gavin Tillery, and Ryan Logan finished the game and got the win on the hill as a result.
“We did really well,” Gross said of Monday’s win. “We’re trying to save some of our pitching going into the wood bat tournament (at Sheridan on Thursday). I threw Grayson Cole, who’s not typically one of our starters.
“He gave up a couple of runs and I put in Gavin Tillery, then Ryan Logan came in and shut it down. It was 4-4 going into the eighth, but we ended up pulling away 7-4 in the eighth inning.”
The Cabot Senior American Legion team played at Jacksonville last night after deadlines and will play again tomorrow in the first round of the Sheridan Wood Bat Tournament. Cabot’s first game of the tournament is scheduled to start at 6 p.m.