The high school baseball careers of Corbin Wright and Josh Raines ended abruptly.

The Airport Eagles baseball team was starting to play their best baseball at the right time, winning four of their last five including a tiebreaker game to place them second in the region right before playoff time. 

But that opportunity never came. While taking batting practice in preparation for what would be a big playoff run, Wright and Raines received text messages that all high school athletes dread. They were summoned by the coaches for a team meeting.

“We were in the cage warming up before a game that we were supposed to play against Easley,” Wright recalled. “Coach sent us a text that said ‘Come meet in our Eagles Nest,’ which is our locker room. And he kind of broke the news to us.”

“I kind of had a bad feeling whenever coach called us in when we were done hitting, we didn’t know what to think,” Raines said.

That news was that the South Carolina High School Sports League ruled Airport to be ineligible for postseason play after playing an ineligible player. According to a source, it was a simple mistake done with no malicious intent, but by rule, the Eagles would not be allowed to finish the season, a ruling that ultimately ended the high school baseball careers of Raines and Wright.

“We usually go out to eat on the last day of the season after the last game and I think it really hit then,” Raines said. “I realized it was over because as a team we went out and we ate and that was the end. That’s when it really sunk in for us.”

“I really didn’t know how to react to it at first and after a while it kind of set in that it’s the last time stepping on to that field to play a game. It kind of sucked,” Wright said. 

The news hit Raines hard as well. While the rest of the state was playing playoff baseball, he needed a distraction.

“I was just trying to keep myself busy and not thinking about it, sitting at home and doing nothing,” Raines remembered. “That’s not what I like to do so I go to work and stuff like that. Just to keep my mind off.”

But as Raines looked back on the avoidance behaviors he used to keep from thinking about the sadness of one season ending, he quickly found a silver lining in a new season that was beginning for him and Wright.

“And then Legion ball came around and we got right back at it.”

Wright and Raines were still able to play American Legion baseball for West Columbia Post 79 along with fellow Airport teammates Cameron Atkins, John Allen Forrester, Matthew Hanna and Addison Keisler. 

Even though Raines and Wright still have their college careers to look forward to, the postseason run ramping up with West Columbia Post 79 represents a great opportunity to make the playoff push they couldn’t during their senior years.

“It gives us a little more edge to compete,” Wright said. “It gives us an opportunity to win more games and play a little longer before we go to college with some of the guys that aren’t going to college. It just gives us a little more of an opportunity to go out there and play the last games we can.”

West Columbia Post 79 has had their ups and downs this season, but as the regular season winds down and ends July 6, the team has found their footing and is getting hot at the right time. 

After starting the season with a 3-8 record after 11 games, a successful weekend tournament in Myrtle Beach has seemingly brought the team a sense of revival. It won all three games against teams from West Virginia and Ohio and then returned home to beat Chapin-Newberry Post 193/24 by a score of 11-4 to increase their winning streak to four games.

Wright is hitting the ball exceptionally well for West Columbia. He hit a grand slam in the last game against Chapin-Newberry and hit two more in the prior game against Potamac Valley. For the season, Wright is leading the team in home runs with three, runs batted in with 12 and slugging percentage at .750 while also being second on the team in on-base plus slugging (OPS) at 1.225.

“I’m just trying to hone in on my swing and get everything I can to work at the right time before going off to college and be the best I can be before I get there,” Wright said. 

Raines has also been able to make a difference on the mound as he pitched a complete game to get the win against Chapin-Newberry and in his six games, has struck out 15 batters and posted an earned run average of three and is giving up less than a walk or hit per inning. He’s also taking this opportunity to work on the impact he can bring with his bat as well as his impact as a pitcher.

“I’m just kind of flattening out my bat path and trying to hit more line drives instead of hooks or just have pop-ups,” Raines said. “Pitching, I’m just trying to throw more strikes. That’s all I can do. Try to throw more strikes.”

Whenever the American Legion baseball playoffs begin in July, Wright and Raines will be given one last opportunity to make a deep run with some of their old high school teammates.

West Columbia’s current four game winning streak has a weird parallel to the hot streak Airport got on towards the end of their regular season. For Raines, the way the season has progressed and the way they’re coached gives him the same feeling about this team that he had with his school team at Airport.

“At Airport, we won because we’re well coached. Coach Bradwell [Airport] is a great coach and we were able to get wins early in the season,” Raines said. “But we didn’t really start getting hot until the end of the season close to the playoffs and I’m getting kind of that same feeling now. We’re getting hot at the right time.”