The Boys of Summer, they weren’t; at least not in the post-season.

For the Mount Holly High baseball team of 1954, the North Carolina Class A state runners-up, the script for the playoffs somehow forgot the part about lazy, sunny afternoons with nine innings of fastballs, the crack of the bat, dirt-cloud slides and screaming umpires. In fact, the path to the state championship game, when the Hawks lost to Hertford, sometimes meant not even taking the field.

These were the boys of the rainy spring, the boys of the unusual circumstance, who could advance with the flip of a coin, and win despite an opposing pitcher’s no-hitter.

Archives show a line-up of Benny Carpenter (1B), Tommy Crawford (2B), Don Killian (SS), Tommy McIntosh (3B), Don Lee (C), Dicky Kirby (LF), Dean Sherrin (CF), Tommy Lee (RF) and pitchers Max Sherrill, Tommy Wilson and Forest McIntosh. Other teammates were Laney Funderburke, Barry Black, Bob Black and Ted Hager. Seth Kirby was the manager, and Ken Bost coached them.

The Hawks’ intriguing post-season began with the Little Ten Conference tournament, when they were tied 1-1 in a best-of-3 series with Dallas. The rains came, heavy rains, enough that league officials said the deciding game could not be played and the team that advanced would be the team that guessed heads or tails.

The Hawks advanced.

The first and second round of the playoffs also were cancelled by rain.

Again, up went the coins, and onward went Mount Holly.

After winning a third-round game over Allen Jay High School from High Point, the Hawks faced Kernersville for the Western North Carolina 1A title, and this time, they got to play baseball.

In the first game, the Kernersville pitcher threw a no-hitter, but that didn’t matter to the Hawks, who used several errors, four stolen bases and a suicide squeeze in the bottom of the ninth to win 3-1 and give Max Sherrill his 12th consecutive win of the season. Sherrill gave up four hits and struck out 12.

Kernersville won the second game 7-6.

Then, on May 29, 1954, Sherrill threw a four-hitter and the Hawks got 10 hits to win 9-0 and advance to the state championship – the farthest any baseball team from Mount Holly had ever gone. The team finished 13-4, and along with the team of 1955, has gained entry into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

The 1955 team was Western N.C. 1A runner-up to Colfax, marking two consecutive years the Mount Holly team had postseason victories – which hadn’t happened since 1930.