Tiger Sharks open with two wins
It’s always nice to open a baseball season with half of your team made up of seniors, and that’s what Port St. Joe has.
With age comes expectations, and for the first two games this season, the Tiger Sharks met them.
A 5-2 win over the Marauders at Maclay Feb. 20, was followed by a home opener Friday which Port St. Joe won 6-2 over the Sneads Pirates.
The eight seniors who make up Coach Ashley Summerlin’s squad are #4 CJ Conway, #7 Jentzen Odom, #9 Owen Grantland, #12 Brady Olson, #13 Fisher Vandertulip, #14 Max Godwin, #16 Hunter Hicks and #18 Cullen Partie.
Summerlin and his four assistants, Rock Quinn, Tracy Browning, Tyler Worley and Zac Jasinski, also are working with two juniors, #6 Peyton Knox and #15 Hunter Hoskins; five sophomores, #1 Baylor Partie, #8 Jacob Hensley, #10 Brayden Dailey, #17 Tucker Ashcraft, and #99 Eli Harris; and freshman #3 Jaxson Odom.
Against Maclay, three senior pitchers, Jentzen Odom, Vandertulip and Godwin held Maclay to two runs on five hits, with Odom and Vandertulip splitting the nine strikeouts between them.
The Tiger Sharks scored five runs on five hits, with Vandertulip and Hoskins each banging out two base hits, and batting in one run each, and Godwin adding a hit and scoring two runs. Baylor and Cullen Partie each scored a run, as did Hicks. Vandertulip stole two bases and Godwin one.
On Friday night at home against Sneads, Baylor Partie struck out eight, and gave up just one hit and one run in his six innings on the mound. Vandertulip closed out the game with an inning in relief, allowing no hits, striking out two and walking two while giving up one run.
The Tigers Sharks six runs on seven hits came thanks to two runs batted in and one hit by Conway, and a two-run double by Harris.
Grantland drove in a run and scored one, and Olson, Vandertulip and Hicks also had base hits.
Meet the Editor
David Adlerstein, The Apalachicola Times’ digital editor, started with the news outlet in January 2002 as a reporter.
Prior to then, David Adlerstein began as a newspaperman with a small Boston weekly, after graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He later edited the weekly Bellville Times, and as business reporter for the daily Marion Star, both not far from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
In 1995, he moved to South Florida, and worked as a business reporter and editor of Medical Business newspaper. In Jan. 2002, he began with the Apalachicola Times, first as reporter and later as editor, and in Oct. 2020, also began editing the Port St. Joe Star.