FOREST CITY, N.C.—The Forest City Owls, the nation’s No. 1-ranked summer college team, completed a magical, storybook-quality 2009 season Friday night by winning two games to capture the Coastal Plain League’s Pettit Cup championship. The Owls swept the Peninsula Pilots in the best-of-3 final, winning both games 5-1.
The first contest was the completion of a rain-suspended game that began in Hampton, Va., (home of the Pilots) on Thursday, and the Owls successfully wrapped up the series in the regularly-scheduled game that followed.
After posting a 46-9 record during the regular season and setting numerous league records in the process, the Owls ran the table in the playoffs, winning all five games. Their 51 wins overall topped all summer teams.
Forest City was ranked No. 1 in PG Crosschecker’s weekly ranking of the nation’s Top 25 summer teams entering Friday’s doubleheader sweep, and it should be a mere formality that the Owls will conclude the season at No. 1. With competition in all of the nation’s remaining summer leagues/tournaments wrapping up this weekend, a final ranking will be posted Tuesday.
Appropriately, righthanders Ryan Arrowood and Spencer Patton, the Owls record-setting starting pitchers, took care of business Friday.
Arrowood, a rising sophomore at Appalachian State, continued his perfect season with a dominating performance in the opener, which had been suspended after just one inning a day earlier. Coming on in relief in the second with his team trailing 1-0, Arrowood tossed eight shutout innings, allowing just two hits while striking out six. He retired 11 consecutive batters to close the game.
A local product who attended nearby RS Central High School, the 6-foot-3, 180-pound Arrowood won all 10 games he started in the regular season to tie a CPL record, and picked up two more wins in the postseason.
Patton, who went undrafted in June after his junior season at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, was every bit as dominant as Arrowood in the clincher. He allowed one run over eight innings, striking out 11, as the Owls won their first league title in franchise history. During the regular season, Patton went 9-0 and set a CPL record with 110 strikeouts. He struck out 17 more in two post-season starts.
Between them, Arrowood and Patton went 23-0 on the summer.
Not to be outdone, Forest City’s record-setting closer, righthander Robbie Andrews (Virginia Commonwealth), got in on the action as he came in to close out the second contest, pitching a scoreless ninth. Andrews saved 12 games and didn’t allow a run during the regular season, and it wasn’t until earlier in the playoffs that he surrendered his first walk of the summer.
Andrews allowed two hits in the ninth, but retired Peninsula’s Matt Payton on a fly ball to Owls centerfielder Wade Moore (North Carolina State) to close the game. Forest City’s players stormed onto the field and the team celebrated with a dog pile at the left of the pitcher’s mound.
The Owls franchise, which moved to Forest City from Spartanburg, S.C., following the 2007 season, had not won a playoff game in three previous tries coming into the 2009 season. After a spectacular run in the regular season and setting the CPL single-season record with 46 wins, the No. 1-seeded Owls won all five playoff games to complete an incredible year.
EDITOR’S NOTE: PG Crosschecker’s Allan Simpson attended Friday’s clinching doubleheader in Forest City and his comprehensive, more enlightening article on one of the most compelling, heart-warming stories of the 2009 baseball season (at any level) will follow shortly.