The 1st half of the Coastal Plain League season ended this past weekend for the Lexington County Blowfish.

After sweeping the Spartanburgers in a Friday doubleheader to improve to 5-1 against the CPL newcomer, Lexington County was on the receiving end of a sweep 24 hours later by West Division champion Savannah.

The 2 losses dropped the Blowfish to 0-6 this season against the Bananas to go with a 1-3 showing against Florence.

With 10 games against the 2 teams in the 2nd half of the season, Lexington County head coach Fico Kondla knows they must fare better if his team is to win the West in the 2nd half.

“That’s an ugly number 1-9,” said Kondla about his team’s showing against Savannah and Florence. “We definitely need to play better ball at times. I feel like a lot of our losses were self-inflicted. Just bad baseball a couple of innings with baserunning mistakes, putting 2 many people on base with walks or errors.

“There’s some things which we can clean which I think it’s a positive because I like the talent we have. I think we have a good group of guys that care about each other and want to win ballgames. We just need to get a little better with those physical mistakes that I feel we had a good chance of learning from this 1st half and making improvements on in the 2nd half.”

A couple of positives from the 1st half are the play of former local standout pitchers Tyler Olenchuk of Dutch Fork and Dalton Mims of Airport.

Olenchuk and fellow Clemson pitcher Ricky Williams of River Bluff have the most starts (4) and he sports a 2.74 earned run average. It’s at the plate where Olenchuk leads in batting average (.414) and doubles (5) and tied for 2nd in RBI (8).

“He’s our most productive offensive player this 1st half which was a good surprise and kind of a blessing in disguise,” Kondla said. “He’s been really productive for us both on the mound and swinging-wise.”

Kondla is effusive in his praise of Mims, who in a 6-1 win at Forest City on June 21 threw the 1st 9 inning complete game for a Blowfish player since Heath Holder’s no-hitter on June 23, 2016.

The Winthrop righthander leads Lexington County in victories (2) and strikeouts (24) to go with a 1.95 ERA. “Dalton Mims is a helluva competitor,” Kondla said. “Every time I put him in a game, I have to fight him to take the ball out of his hands because he wants to go out there and do his best for the team and be able to put the situation away.”

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