Published: June 30, 2009 11:45 pm      

Post 32 comes home

Beckley’s road warriors are finally home, loaded with confidence.

After playing its first 17 games on the road, Post 32 gets to play host Thursday for the first time. Fairmont Post 44 rolls into Raleigh County for a 5:30 p.m. doubleheader. The games will be played on Joseph H. Goddard Field at Independence High School.

“We’re relieved,” first-year Post 32 coach Brett Buchanan said. “We’re going to practice (today) to get the guys used to the field again, we’ve been away from it for so long. We’re just relieved to be back home.”

Post 32 (13-4) split a doubleheader with Parkersburg Post 15 on Monday. They lost the first game 13-6 before taking the second 15-9.

Still, the team got a huge lift when it won the South Charleston Invitational last weekend. Beckley went 7-0, including two wins over nemesis South Charleston Post 94.

“It was a big confidence booster for us to beat South Charleston twice on their home field,” Buchanan said.

Beckley and South Charleston have quite a history. It was South Charleston that Post 32 beat for state championships in 2002 and 2005, both in Beckley and both in its final at-bat.

But Post 94 has gotten the better of the series in recent years. This season, however, Beckley has won three of the teams’ four meetings thus far. One of them was a 3-2 win in last weekend’s championship game, won in the bottom of the seventh inning.

“We had been right there with them,” Buchanan said, “but they always had a lot of confidence against us. Now our guys have gained it.”

Buchanan is pleased with the team’s cohesiveness through the first month of the season, although two players have been lost. Independence graduate and current University of Charleston pitcher Douglas Poe had to leave because of an arm injury, and Mark Ward opted to no longer play.

Their spots were quickly filled by Independence all-stater Kendrick Epling and Fayetteville’s Nich Carte.

“(The season) is going good,” Buchanan said. “Everybody is coming together as a team, which is what I was hoping for.”

— E-mail: gfauber@register-herald.com