The Mathews High School varsity baseball team played two crucial conference matchups at home last week, standing up against longtime rival, the Middlesex Chargers, and one of the team’s biggest foes of recent years, the King William Cavaliers.

Mathews picked up an 8-2 win on Friday, and posted a 5-0 shutout over the Cavaliers on Tuesday.

The Chargers threw the first punch on Friday, as they knocked in the only run that starter Will Harrington would give up during his three innings on the mound. Mathews bounced right back in the bottom of the inning with four runs, sparked by a two-run single by Harrington and two more RBI singles by William Smith and Logan Bell. The game eventually fell into the hands of the Devils, as Brian Owens would provide the Devils with 2 2/3 innings of one-run relief, while the offense backed the effort with one more run in the fifth and three more in the sixth, with RBI singles from seniors Austin Kemp and Paul Burnette. Colin Cook recorded a four-out ...