It’s 10:45 on a recent Saturday night. The activity bus that just pulled out of the Millbrook High School parking lot in north Raleigh is empty, save for Green Hope baseball coaches Marty Weiss and Mike Miragliuolo.

Miragliuolo, the Falcons’ head coach, leaned back in his cramped, third-row seat and exhaled.

“What a long day,” he said to no one in particular.

Indeed it was.

Miragliuolo’s day began about 14 hours earlier, preparing the field at Green Hope for his team’s game at 1 that afternoon, which was a 10-0, five-inning win over Southeast Raleigh in the Cossa Memorial game. After a three-hour break following that game, the team regrouped at Green Hope and hopped the bus to Millbrook to play Apex in the Bobby Murray Invitational championship game, which was a 22-7, five-inning loss.

The Falcons played their way into the title game because they allowed only two runs in their first two games of the tournament. The championship game was originally scheduled for April 5, but uncooperative weather during the course of the tournament’s first two days reshuffled the entire tournament schedule. That moved the tournament’s championship game to April 19.

When Green Hope discovered it would appear in the title game, a scheduling conflict presented itself.

Also on April 19, the Falcons had scheduled the Cossa Memorial Game, a fundraising exhibition to commemorate Matt Cossa, a 2003 Green Hope alum who passed away from Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006. Because of the organizing efforts and the importance for that game, there was no way Miragliuolo was going to reschedule it.

Playing for the Bobby Murray championship was something Green Hope had never done, so the team wanted to play that game, too.

So Miragliuolo decided the Falcons would play them both.

The only concern going into the day was would they have enough pitching to get through it. If playing twice in one day wasn’t enough to test the pitching staff, Green Hope also played a game the night before, a 5-4 win over Panther Creek. Right hander Chris Perry and lefty Dylan Kipp both threw in that game, which made the unavailable for Saturday’s doubleheader. Furthermore, Joe Pistacchio, the No. 3 pitcher, was out with arm trouble. And Michael Sondag would have have started the Cossa game, but he took a line drive off his face earlier in the week and suffered a minor concussion.

“I knew other people that normally don’t pitch, were going to have to,” Kipp said. “I knew we were going to struggle a bit, but if we kept hitting, I knew we were going to be fine.”

The opener

Shortly before 10 a.m., Miragliuolo cut the final swatches of grass in the outfield and parked the riding mower outside one of the Green Hope field’s dugouts. The first of the day’s many pregame tasks was complete. The first pitch was roughly three hours away.

Next, he picked up a can of white spray paint and put the finishing touches on the foul lines down the third-base side and then the first-base side.

“Today’s going to be crazy,” he said, as the field started coming to life.

Volunteers hooked up the PA system, readied the concession stand ready, set up tents and prepared the silent auction for the biggest crowd the team expects all season.

The big crowd is not the only expectation — it will also be an emotional afternoon. Alumni, along with Cossa family and friends will all come out to remember Matt, a four-year starter on the baseball team at Green Hope from 1999-2003. Though no one on the current Green Hope roster played with him, they all recognized the significance of the event.

Players began trickling in around 11 a.m. Freshman catcher Anthony Collantino was the first to arrive.

“It’s a great day for baseball,” he said. “It should be fun.”

At 1:13 p.m., after pregame warm-ups, a few words and then a moment of silence to remember Matt, Green Hope’s Nolan Poythress delivered the first pitch. After getting the game’s first hitter out, Poythress matched his innings pitched total for the season – one-third.

As the game continues, Poythress found his groove. He set down the first nine batters and was perfect through three innings.

Poythress gave up a hit at the start of the fourth inning and allowed only two more runners the rest of the game. His curveball cut through the Southeast lineup with relative ease.

“My whole goal going into the game was to throw strikes,” Poythress said. “If they hit me, they hit me. I just wanted to get in there and take up a few innings so our good pitchers could save it up for Apex.”

Poythress threw a five-inning complete game, and the Falcons won 10-0. Poythress also hit a home run and had three RBIs. The game took 75 minutes. All those concerns about pitching were cast aside.

Miragliuolo couldn’t have asked for the game to go any better. It was quick and he used just one pitcher.

“That was about perfect,” Miragliuolo said. “I can’t complain.”

The players had about five hours before they faced Apex.

The nightcap

At 5:30 p.m., after most everyone had gone home, grabbed a snack and nap, players gathered in the parking lot at Green Hope High and boarded the bus for Millbrook, site of the Bobby Murray championship game against Apex.

Upon arriving at Millbrook, shortly after 6 p.m., word reached the team that their game might be delayed. A game earlier in the day, with a final score of 23-19, threw off the schedule. The Green Hope-Apex game could start as late as 8:30 p.m.

“That’s the last thing we need,” Miragliuolo said.

The preceding game ended at 7:24 p.m. Green Hope and Apex both decide not to take infield practice, and the first pitch was thrown at 7:53 p.m.

By 7:57 p.m., Apex was up 2-0 and there was no one out.

“This is not good,” Miragliuolo said.

It got worse.

Apex scored seven runs in the first inning and starting pitcher Eric Brady was chased after one-third of an inning.

“It was tough,” said Green Hope second baseman David Teter. “You want to get out there and have a shut down inning in the first and have an opportunity to take the lead. And when you’re down 7-0 after the first inning, you don’t really have that opportunity. We came back and scored a couple, but it didn’t turn out to be enough.”

Apex continued to pile on after the torrid start. The Cougars led by at least five runs the rest of the game and won 22-7 in five innings.

The concerns Green Hope had about its pitching revealed themselves.

In the fourth inning, Weiss, the Green Hope assistant coach, walked through the dugout and asked, “Who hasn’t pitched yet?”

Later in the fourth inning, Miragliuolo called on Teter to pitch. Teter had not done so since a JV game two years ago.

“When he pointed at me, I turned and looked because Dylan was in right field and was like, ‘Dylan, come on in,’” Teter said. “But I kept looking and no one else was moving, so I guess it had to be me.”

Teter was one of seven pitchers used on the day. He lasted a third of an inning.

“The biggest fear was that what happened in game two was going to happen in game one,” Miragliuolo said. “And then you don’t know what to do if you’ve gone through everybody [in the first game]. You have to have people throwing two games in a day. You’re worried you’re going to put people in pressure situations they haven’t been in. Some of the freshmen were thrown into the fire and I think its good to see them in a situation like that."

Green Hope’s seven pitchers combined to surrender 22 runs on 13 hits, with five strikeouts, 13 walks and two hit batters. But the Falcons had plenty of trouble in the field, too, with five errors that led to nine unearned runs.

“At the end of it all, I think mentally when [Apex] scored all those runs right away, that made it tough,” Miragliuolo said. “Guys knew they were going to have to pitch. And we got in a hole like that, we might have mentally been broken at that point.”

Green Hope had extended its winning streak to three games with the afternoon win and saw it come to a close with the evening loss. They had moved a game above .500, only to have the record back to even (9-9) when it was all over with. And they played two games in two locations over the course of several hours one afternoon and evening – plus a third game at another locale the night before – but no one complained that it was too much.

“It was a pretty long day, but it was a fun day,” Kipp said. “It was worth it.”