Baseball: Navarre 10, Freeport 0

Senior Night couldn’t have been much better.

Twelfth-grader Kyle Camilli provided all the offense Navarre needed Monday with a first-inning solo homerun and classmate Nick Combs pitched a three-hit, five-inning shutout in the Raiders’ 10-0 run-rule-shortened high school baseball win against Freeport.

“That’s how (Senior Night) should be,” Navarre head coach Mickey O’Quinn said after game. “I wish they could all be like that.”

The Navarre Baseball Booster Club honored senior players Camilli, Combs, Jordan Morgan, Brock Secondine, Devante Taylor and Chris Wheeler; senior members of the Diamond Girls student support group Sally Faulk, Sadie Harsey, Kayla King, Logan Rhoten and Cassandra Venegas; and Ian Lockwood, a Raiders’ Class of 2011 baseball and football player who died in January of complications from brain cancer. The team already had retired Lockwood’s number “10” and his jersey hangs in the Navarre dugout during games.

Combs, the Raiders’ 2010 Pitcher of the Year, struck out two Bulldogs and walked none to earn his first win of the season.

“It felt great,” the lanky Combs said after the game. “I’m happy to play for a team that can make plays behind me. I’m not a strikeout pitcher, it’s all about my teammates playing good defense.”

Besides blasting his first homer of the season, Camilli also doubled, scored and drove in three runs. Juniors Dusty Jones, Jacob Terry and Cale Secondine singled and drove in two runs each; Morgan singled, drove in a run and scored twice; Taylor doubled and scored; and Wheeler singled and scored twice for Navarre (13-11 overall).

Junior lefthander Austin Woodward started and took the loss for the Class 2A Bulldogs, who fell to 9-9 overall. Dakota Davis, Caleb McCormick and Collin Myrick had Freeport’s only hits.

The Raiders are scheduled to play at 6 p.m. tonight in Fort Walton Beach. Navarre will play Escambia in the first round of the District 1-5A tournament at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Escambia.