By Joseph Krum
Staff Writer
@joseph_krum

Right when the second game of a three-game playoff series was about to start between Coppell and Cedar Hill, Mother Nature decided that she did not want the game to happen, at least for a while.

After a few minutes of downpour rain, the game went on and the Cowboys stole the show behind a nine strikeout performance from junior pitcher Charles King.

The first inning was one of the best from Coppell. King led off the top of the inning with two K’s, and back-to-back doubles from juniors Hayden Kettler and Marco Navarro lead to a four-run Cowboy first inning.

The Cowboys’ offense delivered three more punches in the fourth behind two singles from Kettler and senior Daniel Jones, making the score 7-0.

King was later pulled after 5 2/3 inning of work, recording nine total strikeouts. Junior pitcher Ray Gaither then pitched three outs, two of them strikeouts. Senior pitcher Joseph Goetze came in for the last out, forcing the Cedar Hill batter to ground out, ending the game.

After only allowing one hit and one walk, King has a special reason as for why he did so good.

“I woke up and just felt good today,” King said. “My grandparents, uncles and aunts all came in town, so I really wanted to throw good for them. I locked in tonight, and threw the best I could.”

CHS baseball coach Kendall Clark saw what specifically King was doing good at in his dominating performance.

“[King] was able to get ahead in the strike count, and he was locating his pitches really well,” Clark said. “He has the ability to throw really hard, which makes him very hard to hit off of. For a while, he had a perfect game going. There were a couple more guys I wanted to throw that didn’t get to, but we just wanted to win the game and move on.”

The Cowboys move on to the area round of the Class 6A state baseball playoffs, facing the winner of the Flower Mound Marcus/Denton Guyer matchup. Clark looks to depend on his whole team for the next round and hopefully later into the playoffs.

“You really need your whole lineup contributing to be able to win, and right now most of our guys are pretty hot,” Clark said. “If they’re not hot, they’re still contributing in other ways. But if you’re going a long ways into the playoffs, you’ll need the whole team with you and we have lots of guys pitching in and helping.”