Jackson settles down, leads Fuquay-Varina baseball by D.H. Conley in 1st round

Fuquay-Varina pitcher Kyle Jackson was excited to take the mound for his team against D.H. Conley in the first round of the N.C. High School Athletic Association 4A baseball playoffs Tuesday.

“Jacked up,” is the specific phrase the senior right-hander used.

Perhaps too jacked up, for that matter. Three batters into the game, Conley had the bases loaded with no outs, poised to start the things off with a bang.

But Jackson settled down. He managed to coax the 18th-seeded Vikings into grounding into a 3-2-3 double play and escaped the first inning without giving up a run, as he went on to throw 6 1/3 scoreless innings in No. 16 seed Fuquay-Varina’s 3-0 victory.

“Once we made that play, I just knew we were going to get out of it; especially with how we’ve been playing this year,” Jackson said.

Thanks to Jackson’s stellar work on the mound, Fuquay-Varina (17-7) moves on to face No. 3 seed Jordan in the second round.

Although he didn’t have his “best stuff” – his words – Jackson stymied Conley (15-8) when it had runners on base, which was quite often.

Despite not recording a strikeout, he managed to pitch to contact well, stranding 10 Vikings on base, while issuing just one walk following the first inning.

“My coach told me in of my first starts this year just to let them hit it and good things will happen,” Jackson said. “Today, I just didn’t have my off-speed so I just kept throwing the fastball, hoping they would hit it to my team and they did.”

Originally a relief pitcher, Jackson moved into a starting role for the Bengals in early April against Sanderson, and has excelled since then.

In 39 2/3 innings of work, he has a 1.43 ERA and has bolstered a pitching staff that also includes senior Brycen Braswell (1.16 ERA) and sophomore Garrett McCraw (2.90 ERA).

“He throws three pitches for strikes and gets in the zone,” Fuquay-Varina associate head coach Zach Boraski said of Jackson. “He commands the zone and gives our fielders a chance right away. He competes – that’s the biggest thing for us.”

Conley had an ace of its own to throw in senior Noah Jones, an East Carolina signee, and while the Bengals didn’t necessarily hammer the ball, they eventually wore him down, scoring three runs – two of which came in the third inning – on a pair of RBI singles and a passed ball.

Once his hitters settled down, Boraski thought they had a solid approach at the plate.

“After the first inning, I thought it was very good,” he said. “We had to relax. Sometimes in a playoff game, you can yell ‘relax’ and and scream ‘relax’ but until something actually happens in the game that they know is OK, then they’ll relax.”

Prior to the win, the Bengals, fourth-place finishers in the SWAC, had lost five of their most recent seven contests.

But after their first-round triumph, the they are full of confidence heading into their matchup against Jordan.

“I have not heard anything about them except that they’re the No. 1 seed (in the Mideast),” Jackson said about Jordan. “But I mean, with the way we’ve been playing, we could’ve easily been the No. 1 seed.”

For Conley, the loss was a disappointing end to what was an otherwise good season, according to coach Jason Mills.

While he thought his team had a chance from start to finish, Mills lamented that coming away empty-handed with the bases loaded and nobody out in the first inning was a missed opportunity to set the tone for the game.

“You’ve got to score there,” he said. “That was kind of the story of the game, and they had their chances and did a good job of taking advantage of those opportunities.”

Still, Mills said what he’ll remember most about this season was the growth of his young players – Conley started three sophomores – and his players’ resilience after starting the season 1-4.

“A lot of teams could have packed it in and this team did not,” he said. “They got after it and we got a lot better.”

This story was originally published May 9, 2017 at 11:40 PM with the headline "Jackson settles down, leads Fuquay-Varina baseball by D.H. Conley in 1st round."