{"id":34753,"date":"2018-03-31T18:03:48","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T22:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/?p=34753"},"modified":"2018-04-02T23:34:59","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T03:34:59","slug":"clay-opens-district-play-with-impressive-showings-against-orange-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/?p=34753","title":{"rendered":"Clay Opens District Play With Impressive Showings Against Orange Park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>ORANGE PARK &#8211;<\/strong> The Clay Blue Devils scored 29 runs in two games dominating the back-to-back district baseball contests against Orange Park this week. On Wednesday, Clay scored 11 runs in the first two innings of a 16-1 victory over the Raiders. The very next night, they scored 7 runs in the first inning in a 13-0 against Orange Park.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been the start to district play that head coach Josh Persinger was looking for.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I schedule our district games toward the end of the year, so every game is like a playoff game for us&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Persinger believes that he can get the best out of his players with a heightened since of urgency in do or die baseball. With the wins, Clay improved to 10-5 on the season 2-0 in district play. They understand that they must continue their hot pace to stay close to Ponte Vedra (4-0) and Ridgeview (4-0) in district play.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Clay Blue Devils Interview\" width=\"1150\" height=\"647\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AeIkbyzmnJ8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>What they hadn&#8217;t been able to do early in the season is put the bat on the balls consistently. The Blue Devils found their rhythm against the Raiders thanks to Andrew Yarbrough. He&#8217;s excelled in driving the ball deep and bringing in runs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve had a couple of hard practices, and we&#8217;ve just been working hard; said Yarbrough &#8220;We want to open district play really well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Blue Devils have not only been able to swing the bat well the last two games, but they&#8217;d pitched better as well. One of the reasons is pitcher Dylan Faulkner who gave up only one run against Orange Park the first night.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel like we have settled down and once I did that I was able to throw strikes&#8221; said Faulkner.<\/p>\n<p>They are just two players of a team that seems more confident and focused going down the stretch.<\/p>\n<p>&#8221; We ran into a very good Clay team, who is playing extremely well together&#8221; Orange Park head coach Michael Harrison said. &#8220;We are a young team, so we have a lot of growing to do, to gain more experience. &#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Orange Park looks to finish strong after a tough 1-11 start.<\/p>\n<p>As for Clay they get Menendez next week before facing Ridgeview and Ponte Vedra in three district show downs. <em>&#8220;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We play an extremely tough schedule, and every game for us is preparation for trying to get into the playoffs&#8221; said coach Persinger.<\/p>\n<p>With many returning players, and experience on their side, Clay hopes to peak late for a post season push. They showed this week with their impressive victories that they are fully capable of playing their best baseball on the road to the post-season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ORANGE PARK &#8211; The Clay Blue Devils scored 29 runs in two games dominating the back-to-back district baseball contests against Orange Park this week. On Wednesday, Clay scored 11 runs in the first two innings of a 16-1 victory over the Raiders. The very next night, they scored 7 runs in the first inning in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34755,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[140],"tags":[101,141,256,303],"class_list":["post-34753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-baseball","tag-clay","tag-high-school-baseball","tag-orange-park","tag-top-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/29684180_768895269965747_4335103893476041785_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}