Coaches at Vidalia aren’t ready to let him pitch quite yet, but Brett Hinson showed significant progress at the plate Friday.

The senior has been sidelined with a shoulder that’s given him problems following surgery following his junior season. He hasn’t pitched in about a month, but he’s taking hacks and playing the infield.

In Friday’s 8-0 win over Runnels, he had two doubles and a single while driving in two runs.

&uot;Brett was swinging a hot bat tonight,&uot; VHS head coach Johnny Lee Hoffpauir said. &uot;He has been all year. This team is coming together as a team. If we can get Brett back, that’ll be a big plus. The team has really rallied around Brett.&uot;

At least now others on the pitching staff &045; including left-hander Tony Godbold &045; have stepped up in tough situations in Hinson’s absence. No one knows when the senior will return to the mound, but it could be soon.

&uot;Brett is getting better,&uot; Hoffpauir said. &uot;He’ll start throwing a little pen next week and get him ready for April. I said the first of the year (Godbold) was the key. When Brett went down, he’s been an even bigger key.&uot;

GET TOGETHER &045; Vidalia’s Vikings and their fans showed the last two weeks they’re always up for a break from the ordinary. Thursday’s home contest with Class B Runnels out of Baton Rouge kept the trend going.

The Raiders, with ex-LSU Tigers Tookie Johnson as head coach and John O’Donoghue as assistant, made the trip through Mississippi to Concordia Parish from Baton Rouge to get the game in and play somebody different as well.

The matchmaker? The Web &045; www.kenramsey.com.

&uot;I saw they had an open date, and we had our last open date,&uot; said Johnson, who starred as a utility player with the Tigers in the early 1990s. &uot;We called them up, and it worked for both teams. We wanted one more road trip, and it worked out.&uot;

The game came on the heels of last weekend’s Vidalia Invitational when Oklahoma-based Tecumseh and Hobart participated.

Leave it to the Vikings to have more flexibility with its schedule since its only District 4-2A games will be with Lake Providence.

&uot;That’s fun playing schools like that,&uot; Hoffpauir said. &uot;You know they’re going to be well-coached. It’s always fun to play somebody different. We’ll try to keep it going.&uot;

MORE REPS &045; Trinity Episcopal’s coaching staff will see how it goes from here with right-hander Stevan Ridley, who got perhaps his biggest workout Wednesday in a loss to Silliman.

Saints head coach Matt Mason has kept it slow the standout sophomore on the mound this spring after he spoke of a sore arm. On Wednesday he went four complete innings and getting an out in the fifth before taking an exit.

&uot;That’s the most pitches he’s thrown in a while,&uot; Mason said. &uot;We’ve got a few days coming up. I told him we would push his pitch count and see how he recovers. We let him go to 100 (pitches), and we’ll see how he recovers.&uot;

Ridley throws hard and had success early against the Wildcats, but errors hurt the Saints and the sophomore had some control problems. He walked the first batter in the third and hit the next one, and both later scored.

Spencer McClain was hit by a pitch to lead off the fourth and later scored.

&uot;When you drop a couple of balls, you’ll lose confidence in your defense and you’ll over-pitch,&uot; Mason said.

BANG-BANG PLAY &045; On a night where the bats weren’t carrying the load and the pitching was starting to run out of gas, Huntington couldn’t have gotten a bigger play out of Austin Butler.

In Tuesday’ win over River Oaks, the Raiders finally found success in the sixth inning against left-hander Trey Brashier and cut the deficit down to 3-2 before loading the bases with two outs.

But when Cody Williams hit a grounder to Butler at third, he hustled to the bag, dove and made the play to forced out Ricky Sugg to end the inning.

&uot;They complained that about it,&uot; Huntington head coach Mitch Ashmore said. &uot;You always ask, ‘Did you have him beat?’ and they say, ‘Yeah.’ But I thought he did. That’s what kind of a ball club we have.&uot;