Brandon Bowles, Staff Writer
On Wednesday May 3rd Wingate University Baseball was able to give back to the community by partnering with the Levine’s Children’s Hospital. As of 2014, 15,780 children and adolescence from ages one to nineteen suffer from cancer. Those that lose their battle with cancer are a little less than 2,000 in the United States.
To do their part, the baseball team decided to host a Homerun Derby that anyone willing to donate to the Levine’s Children’s Hospital could participate in. $20 was the entry price for athletes and $10 for non-athletes.
To make things fair, portable fences were brought in one for the guys and one for the girls. Each participant was given five outs to hit as many homeruns as possible. Baseball players had to hit the ball over the normal outfield fence for it to count as a homerun, whereas the guys had to hit it over the second closest fence from home plate and the girls the closest fence from home.
Once everyone got their chance to swing the top eight were selected to move on to the next round. Those participants were Rebekah Woods with eight homeruns, Naomi Sapp with six, Reece Daniel with five, Bub DeLuca, Tyler Napierala, Bradly Brown, Kemper Patton, and Brandon Donahue with four. There would be four head to head matchups to see who would make it to the semifinals and the winners of the semifinal match would make it to the finals.
In the quarter finals Woods would oust Sapp with 11 homeruns, Daniel would hit one to oust Donahue, Brown would oust DeLuca with four homeruns and Patton would oust Napierala with four. In the semifinal round, Woods and Daniel went ont to the finals after beating Brown and Patton respectively.
By this time both players were tired and did everything they could to muster the energy for one more round. When Daniel went first, you could see the fatigue in his eyes. He went through his batting routine and prepared himself for the first pitch.
Knowing that he is setting the bar he hits the second pitch out of the park followed by another one. He then proceeded to make two consecutive outs followed by another homerun followed by another out. On his second to last swing, he kept the ball fair giving him four total for the round.
Woods, on ther hand, knew what she had to hit four to tie five to win. As she stepped to the plate, she took the first pitch like Daniel. She swung at a pitch that didn’t quite make it out, giving her one out.
Then on the third pitch she hit the ball over the fence and followed it with another,, giving her two for the round. She made another out on the next pitch following it with back-to-back homeruns. At the end of the round both players were tied meaning that they would go to a swing off.
In a swing off both batters got a chance to take one swing and if both players fail to hit a homerun the process is repeated. The swing off happened twice with Woods taking the title of Homerun Derby Champion.
In the end, it was not about who hit the most homeruns it was about giving back and helping those that are fighting for their lives.
Photo Source: Wingate Baseball Twitter
Edited by: Brea Childs
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