River Riders slug their way past Axmen in Opening Day victory

ELIZABETHTON, Tenn. – Three different River Riders hit home runs Tuesday night as Elizabethton defeated the Kingsport Axmen, 9-7.

The Axmen got the scoring started in the top half of the first when Payton Allen came home on a sacrifice fly by Corbin Shaw. However, Elizabethton came back in a hurry as four different River Riders came home in the bottom half of the frame, giving them a 4-1 lead after one.

The Riders added on one run each in the second and third innings. In the second, a double from Ryan Weingartner scored Hayden Moore. The run in the third came on a Kingsport wild pitch that allowed Kerry Herndon-Brown to score. A third of the way through, it was 6-1, E-Town.

Elizabethton’s first home run of the night came in the fifth, when Knox Preston hit a solo shot to extend the lead in the 7-1, the largest of the game for the River Riders. The Axmen then began to cut into the lead in the sixth, when an RBI single from Andrew Citron and a sacrifice fly by Ryan McCarthy made it a 7-3 contest.

The comeback continued for Kingsport in the seventh, when a wild pitch and another sac fly made it 7-5. The River Riders then got two insurance runs, as a seventh-inning solo homer by Herndon-Brown and an eighth-inning blast by Moore extended the lead to 9-5.

Those two runs proved to be the difference as a two-run home run by Deniel Ortiz in the ninth cut the deficit to 9-7, where the game would stay.