Beaufort County Post 15’s American Legion baseball team kept rolling on Saturday evening. The Pirates, despite playing with a depleted squad, jumped out to an early lead to defeat Edenton Post 40, 10-6.

The Pirates were without a handful of players due to vacations and a football camp in Charlotte. They made defensive adjustments like putting Hunter Sparks, who is usually behind the plate, out in right field. Beaufort County’s defense didn’t miss a beat, though. Sparks set the tone early on with a highlight-reel diving catch in the outfield.

“We had some people playing out of position. Hunter is normally our catcher and he’s playing in right field,” coach Kevin Cutler said. “We had nine errors in our last game in a 15-14 shootout. We had two errors (Saturday). We’ve won a lot of games by one run … so it’s nice to comeback and win a game.”

Meanwhile, the Pirates continued to become more threatening at the plate. While they played a lot of low-scoring games early in the season, Beaufort County has hit its stride at the plate recently.

Five different Pirates had hits in a five-run second inning. Brock Marsh led off with a single over the opposing shortstop and scored the game’s first run on Matthew Marslender’s single back up the middle. Edenton gifted Beaufort County a run by hitting Zach Woolard with a pitch with the bases loaded.

Reg Bishop and Cody Godley pushed the lead to 5-0 with consecutive base hits. Bishop plopped a backside hit just inside the left-field line to score Woolard and Tyler Harrell. Godley singled over Edenton’s second baseman to score Logan Everette from second.

“I’m really proud of the kids and the way they hit the ball,” Cutler said. “We had 13 hits today. A lot of hits with two outs, too. The bottom of the order did really well for us, too. The bottom of the order scored six of our 10 runs today.”

Edenton got three of those runs back in the top of the third. The visitors had two hits in the frame and took advantage of an error at left field. It put the game within reach for the time being, but the Pirates were able to stay hot at the plate. They tacked on runs in every subsequent inning.

“I love how these kids are resilient and put it behind them,” Cutler said of the Pirates bouncing back from their rare missteps. “I thought Tanner did a good job on the mound. I thought Logan Everette, a freshman, came in and did a good job shutting them down.”

Tanner Alligood worked four frames on the mound, but ran into trouble in the top of the fifth. Edenton got a quick run and was poised to score more before Alligood handed things over to Everette.

Everette made short work of the visitors in the sixth and held them off in the seventh to preserve the win.

The win furthers Beaufort County’s dominance so far this summer. The Pirates have lost just one game and remain atop their conference. Their next league meeting will be this weekend when they host Dare County Post 26.