After heavy rain storms soaked the area earlier this week, Washington baseball coach Matt Burnett spent all day getting Futrell Field prepared for Friday night’s game against D.H. Conley. While the field looked fantastic come game time, getting his club prepared for Ryan Gupton’s electric, high-80s fastball proved to be much more challenging.

Gupton, who has verbally committed to East Carolina University, was on point Friday as he silenced the Coastal Conference rival Pam Pack en route to a 4-0 victory.

Gupton held Washington to two hits, while striking out nine and walking only one batter to improve the Vikings’ record to 7-5 (5-1).

Washington (5-7, 3-3) coach Matt Burnett said what made Gupton so difficult to hit was his ability to mix speeds.

“He throws hard. He is in the upper-80s and he mixes in a good breaking ball, and he’s got a nice little change. When he gets in a groove he is pretty tough,” Burnett said. “He’s gonna win a lot of games and I’m sure when he gets to East Carolina he is going to have a lot of success.”

Gupton’s Vikings teammates gave him some support when they rallied for two runs in the third inning.

Gupton got the inning started when he hit a single off of Washington pitcher Hatteras Brooks and advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt. Leadoff hitter Josh Taylor followed up with an infield single that put runners on the corners for Will Sanderson, who hit an RBI single to take a 1-0 lead.

Brooks recorded the second out of the inning when he picked Sanderson off at second base. With two outs, Jordan Deloatch singled in the second run of the inning to take a 2-0 advantage.

Conley would add another run in the fourth and another insurance run in the seventh.

With the lead, Gupton sailed through a Pam Pack lineup that was minus top-of-the-order hitter Will Swain (knee).

“Gupton is a player, and once he settles in, he gets real tough once he has a lead. He seemed to get stronger as the game went on.” Burnett said. “We have a young team and for some of them this is the first time they have seen a kid like that. Our kids battled, we had some good at-bats as the game went on, we just weren’t able to string two or three hits together to make a dent in the scoreboard.”

Washington’s Austin Mitchell (1-3) and David McIver (1-3) accounted for the team’s only hits.

Brooks, the Pam Pack’s ace, allowed 11 hits while striking out six, walking two and hitting two batters in the loss. Of the 11 hits, several were infield singles as the Vikings’ batters rarely squared up on the Washington pitcher.

“Hatteras the last two weeks has been great,” Burnett said. “We have been able to work a lot of off-speed stuff with him  and what he does out there is induce a lot of ground balls. Unfortunately for us tonight they found some spots. A couple of them were just balls that you had to eat … Hatteras is our go-to guy on the mound and before the year is over he is going to do a lot of good things for us.”

Washington will be back in action on Tuesday when it plays at Havelock.

D.H. Conley 002 100 1 – 4 11 0

Washington 000 000 0 – 0 2 0

WP: Ryan Gupton; LP: Hatteras Brooks

Hitting: DHC č Josh Taylor 2-4 (R), Will Sanderson 2-3 (R, RBI), Jordan Deloatch 2-4 (RBI), Damien Jenkins 2-3 (RBI), Ryan Gupton 2-4 (R), Stephen Whedbee 1-3; W č Austin Mitchell 1-3, David McIver 1-3.