JOHNNY WILSONSPORTS CORRESPONDENT
SALEM, Va. -- Jeff Robinson has been the head baseball coach at Chilhowie for a long time now, but not nearly as long as it's been since the 1970 football Warriors won the only boys state championship in school history.
Some of the old guard was on hand Friday, when Robinson's baseball Warriors steamrolled Lancaster 14-4 in a Class 1 semifinal at Kiwanis Field.
The victory puts Chilhowie in the Class 1 championship game at 1 p.m. here on Saturday, when the Warriors will attempt to end their 54-year drought.
"Butch Crewey's sitting right up there," Robinson said, pointing to the grandstand from where Chilhowie's 1970 quarterback had been watching. "[Two-way '70 star] Tom Hill is up there, too.
"I used to say that they were like the 1972 Miami Dolphins, that they'd come around whenever some Chilhowie team threatened to go undefeated or win something. But they're ready [to share the stage] now -- they want us to win it."
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The Warriors (23-3) get their chance against Rappahannock, a proven program which proved its mettle with a 3-0 win over perennial strongboy Auburn in Friday's other Class 1 semifinal.
The Raiders, who won the 2022 Class 1 championship, will bring a 22-3 record into the game.
"You beat Auburn, now that's saying something," Robinson said. "I looked at Rappahannock's scores, I mean, they lost three times and all were one- or two-run games. They're like five runs from being undefeated.
"But I told the kids, 'So are we. So are we.' You know, we can play a little bit, too."
They can hit, that's for certain. Or at least they did against Lancaster (16-8). Was this typical?
"Not so much," Robinson said. "This was one of our better performances of the year. I hope we saved a few for tomorrow."
The Warriors battered three Lancaster pitchers for 13 base hits, hanging crooked numbers like a drunken sailor -- a 4-spot in the first, a 3-spot in the third and a deadly 7-spot in the sixth.
And it was up and down the lineup, too.
Ninth-place hitter Talan Poe collected three hits and three RBIs. Landon Bowman nearly hit for the cycle with a single, a double, a triple and two RBIs. Brandon Miller ripped a two-run double.
But that's not all.
Noah Hill produced a run-scoring single and a run-scoring double. In addition, Isaac Booth plated a run with one of his three singles, and Jayden Schwartz had an RBI single as well. Ben Kilbourne also drove in a run with a ground-ball out.
The bottom of the order -- Miller, Poe and Booth -- combined for six hits and six runs batted in.
"Some guys have hit all year and some guys have struggled -- we're finally starting to put it all together," said Robinson, in his 23rd year as Chilhowie boss. "I told the kids, 'All we have to do is have a good week. Everybody start hitting and let's have three good games in a row.' And we put nine runs on Fort Chiswell [in a state quarterfinal win] and we got, what, 14 today?
"Our first seven runs today were with two outs. So that's some good production right there."
And the Warriors got good pitching, too, from Booth, who went the distance and allowed five hits and the four runs -- three earned -- while striking out a pair and walking just one.
"We call him our No. 2 and he's 10-0," Robinson said. "How many teams can say that?"
Chilhowie's ace, Dawson Tuell, is set to pitch against Rapppahannock.
Lancaster stayed close for a while, scoring a pair of runs in the third inning and getting a two-run home run from losing pitcher Creston Saunders in the fourth, making it a 7-4 game.
And although the Warriors would eventually induce the mercy rule in the bottom of the sixth, Robinson pointed to a play that Kilbourne made in the top of the inning -- with the score still 7-4 -- when the right fielder threw out slow-footed Taylor Davis at first base after fielding a one-hop liner that would ordinarily be a single.
The inning before, in the bottom of the fifth, the Red Devils had thrown a Chilhowie runner out at home -- the first out of the inning -- as part of a rally-killing double play.
"That was huge, because I felt like the momentum had shifted [to Lancaster] when we had gotten thrown out at the plate," Robinson said. "And that play [by Kilbourne] took it right back and I think that may have broken their spirits a little bit."
Armed with their three-run cushion, the Warriors then batted around in the sixth, Poe starting the inning with an infield single and ending it with an RBI single to right field.
"We hit every week, four days a week," said Poe, a 5-foot-9, 150-pound senior. "We just work hard, in the cage, on the field, every day. Today I had to have an approach to go to the opposite field and do what the team needed.
"I thought we were going to have a hard-fought battle here, but we came out and hit the ball, played great defense and Isaac Booth, he's a wonderful pitcher. It was a great day for us."
Pierson Long had two base hits for the Red Devils, who got an RBI double from Tom Thomas and a sacrifice fly from Brayden George in the third inning, cutting Chilhowie's early four-run advantage in half.
The Warriors responded in the bottom of the third with three runs to assume a 7-2 edge. Poe's two-run single fueled that uprising.
Lancaster committed three errors, including two in the fateful bottom of the sixth. Chilhowie was charged with just one miscue.
Chilhowie was still batting with one out and two runners on base when the game ended.
Lancaster 002 200 -- 4 5 3
Chilhowie 403 007 -- 14 13 1
Saunders, Davis (4), Pittman (6) and George; Booth and Bowman. W -- Booth. L -- Saunders. HR -- Saunders (L) 4th, one on.
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