The Morristown East Hurricanes faced the Carter Hornets in a non-district game at Allen Grubb Field on Thursday, April 3, 2025, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Morristown East won 4-2. (Photo by Danny Parker)
BY MATTHEW LUTEY
Time will tell, but Morristown East’s baseball team may have experienced a win on Thursday that serves as a catalyst to turn around the second half of its season.
The Hurricanes upset Carter, 4-2, at Carter for their fifth win of the season.
subscribe to read full article
This was only Carter’s third loss of the season, the first by more than one run, and the first that didn’t come in extra innings. The Hornets are ranked 7th in this week’s Tennessee Baseball Coaches Association rankings for Class 3A.
After back-to-back losses to Morristown West earlier this week by a combined score of 30-3, Morristown East coach J.D. Newsom said he challenged his team, and early returns indicate they’ve responded.
“We’re still trying to identify what we need to do to get to where we want to be, and we actually had a conversation about that today,” Newsom said.
“With the first half of the season, we had some ups, we had some downs, and the last couple of days haven’t been very good. So I challenged them today to have a better second half than they did the first, and this is a good way to start that.”
Freshman Bryson Walker drove in the go-ahead runs for the Hurricanes (5-13), breaking a 2-2 tie in the top of the sixth inning.
Walker’s two-run single came with two outs and the bases loaded. The ball landed in short center, just out of reach for both Carter’s leaping second baseman and diving center fielder.
“Bryson is another freshman that we had in the game today, we had three in there,” Newsom said.
“We moved him up to the two hole, to try and do a couple of things, because he has a great on-base percentage. And he got his opportunity to get the go-ahead runs in, and he executed it and did great.”
The pitching combination of Parker Setsor and Connor Southard got the job done for the Hurricanes.
Setsor, another freshman, started the game and gave up two runs in the second inning. But Setsor limited the damage in that inning, forcing a groundout to end the inning with the bases loaded.
Southard entered in the fourth inning with two outs and the bases loaded. He got out of the jam by getting Cooper Cardwell, one of Carter’s top hitters with a batting average of .486, to ground out. It was only the second pitching appearance for Southard so far this season. He’s now 2-0 and hasn’t allowed a run.
“I stepped up there with a lot of confidence and felt like I was throwing really good and throwing it hard,” Southard said.
Morristown East trailed 2-0 at the time, but tied the game with two runs in the fifth. Brett Carden started with a first-pitch single to left field, Tucker Wyatt drew a walk and Landry Winstead smacked a single into shallow left to load the bases with no outs.
Isaac Greene, the team’s leader in batting average, hits, RBIs and doubles, added one to his RBI total with a single. Walker tied the game at 2 with a sacrifice fly right after.
All of Morristown East’s eight hits on Thursday were singles.
“We don’t have any worldbeaters on our team, we have one home run all year,” Newsom said.
“We have to put pressure on the defense one way or another. You put the ball in play and you never know what can happen. This is high school ball, errors happen, so by doing those things we put pressure on them and were able to get guys in good scoring opportunities, which gives the guys like Bryson, and Landry and Isaac the opportunities to get those hits.”
Southard closed out the game by striking out Mayson Lang with a runner on first.
The loss doesn’t detract from the hot start Carter has gotten out to this season. The Hornets (12-3) are well ahead of pace to best last season’s 15-13 record.
Luke Burnett is batting .488 with 16 RBIs and two home runs. Pitching, the junior has a 3-1 record with a 1.26 ERA. Junior Cainan Crowe leads Carter with 19 RBIs.
But Thursday night belonged to Morristown East, and Newsom knows what it will take for his team to build on this win.
“We preach being selfless, attention to detail, and being relentless, and I felt like we did all three of those things today.”
5STAR PHOTOS — Morristown East at Carter baseball (April 3, 2025)
[/mepr-show