Despite their regular-season records, both Ahoskie Post 102 American Legion baseball teams ended the year in the playoffs last week.

The junior Legion team under first-year coach Dave Ellis finished 5-20 overall and 3-7 in conference play.

In danger of missing the post-season as the ninth team in the 11-team league with only the top-eight making the playoffs, Ahoskie was able to secure a spot in the Area-One Tournament at Manteo High School after Wilson Post 13 was eliminated due to a technicality.

Seeded eighth, Ahoskie lost its opening round game to top-seed and eventual champion Bear Grass, 6-5, but Post 102 didn’t go down before they took their opponent to extra innings.

Relegated to the loser’s bracket, Ahoskie then unleashed a 12-hit attack and rode the strong pitching of Evan Lassiter and Grant Little to a 10-2 upset of the fifth-seeded Albemarle Wildcats of Elizabeth City.

In 2014 Ahoskie lost its first game in the tournament, but went on to capture the title and earn a trip to the state championships. The team and their fans were hoping history would repeat itself.

However, it was not to be as the four-seed, the Cary Colts, defeated Post 102, 7-3, as Cary went on to meet Bear Grass in the championship round – both those two teams are headed to the state tournament in Swansboro.

“We were a young team this year,” said Ellis. “But I feel what we went through this year will give us experience for next year. We played a lot of close games and we will have to build on that for 2017.”

The senior Legion team – drawing players from seven different high schools – struggled to open the 2016 campaign, but won five of their last seven games to end 8-11 overall, and an even 7-7 conference regular-season record, their best finish ever. That earned Ahoskie a fourth-place finish in Area-One and secured the final home field spot in the senior playoffs, hosting five-seed, Kinston.

After the two teams split during the regular season with each club winning on the other’s home field, including a loss in their home finale, Ahoskie was poised to move into the final four. However, playing three games against each other in six days, Post 43 made light work of Ahoskie, winning in a two-game sweep by scores of 9-2 at Hertford County High Field and 8-7 back in Kinston’s Grainger Stadium.

“They were a great group of guys from seven or eight different schools,” said veteran senior coach Chris Towell. “Everybody contributed and we had a lot of one-run games that could have gone either way, but these guys gave every game everything they had.”

Both the junior and senior teams now look forward to the 2017 season.