Patriot baseball earns split with Nettleton

Marion wins game one, falls in nightcap

By Chuck Livingston

Marion School District

For almost 13 innings of baseball on Tuesday night inside First National Bank of Eastern Arkansas Stadium against Nettleton, everything went exactly to plan for the Marion Patriots.

Marion handled the Raiders 73 in the first contest, riding a five-run third inning to a crucial league victory.

The Pats appeared to be rolling in the nightcap, as well. Marion fashioned a 2-0 lead entering the bottom of the sixth, just six outs away from MHS's first conference sweep of 2025.

Then disaster struck as Nettleton rallied to score three times in the sixth, though just one run was earned, for a dramatic

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3-2 victory that forced a doubleheader split with Marion.

Marion and Nettleton split their 5A East series this spring, but the Patriots did claim the run-differential tiebreaker with the Raiders in the event that the teams are tied at the end of the regular season.

MHS got another stellar start from senior right-handed pitcher Cohen “Jimmy” Bumbaugh, who fired 5.1 innings of no-hit baseball at the Raiders, striking out 11 batters and allowing a single earned run.

Hudson “Turkey” McKewen and Jude Jackson relieved Bumbaugh, covering the final 1.2 innings to help Marion earn victory.

Offensively, Marion muscled out nine hits against Nettleton. Carson Catt (2-4 with a double and a triple, two RBI, and a run scored), Brody Byrd (2-3 with an RBI and a run scored), while McKewen drove in two runs, and Max Molloy scored twice.

Marion gave the ball to junior Coleman Barnett for the second contest, and the righthander dazzled Nettleton into that fateful sixth inning, spinning 5.1 innings, striking out seven Raiders, walking zero batters, and surrendering just three hits and three runs, though just one was earned.

Molloy (1-2 in the second game with two walks and an RBI), Catt (1-4), and Barnett (1-3 with two runs scored) combined to produce Marion's three hits in the nightcap.

Nettleton struck first in the first inning of the initial game, but Marion quickly evened the score at 1 apiece in the home half of the first when Molloy and Catt led off with back-to-back triples.

Holt led that frame off with a double and he scored when Molloy reached on an error, and Molloy came down on the next pitch as Catt doubled for a 3-1 Marion lead.

A Byrd base hit delivered Catt, and the big blow of the inning came when McKewen singled to deliver Ben Bateman and Byrd for a 6-1 Marion bulge.

Barnett walked with one out in the sixth and scored on a Holt double for a 7-1 Marion lead that lasted until the top of the seventh when the Raiders scored twice, but did no further damage. The nightcap opened up as a classic pitcher's duel between Barnett and Nettleton righthander Ford Raffo, and the contest moved scoreless into the top of the third.

That's when Barnett helped his own cause by striking a lead-off double, and he scored the game's first run after stealing third and scoring on a wild pitch.

The one-run bulge held until the fifth when Marion rallied up again when Barnett reached on an error and scored on Molloy's double for a 2-0 advantage.

Barnett was on cruise control until the sixth, when an error put the lead-off man on for Nettleton, and the Raiders scored runs on a single, a fielder's choice, and a wild pitch to account for their three runs.

Molloy coaxed a two-out walk in the top of the seventh before Nettleton got the final out.