PREP BASEBALL: St. James sweeps Montgomery Academy in area play
Michael Hassell picked up a win over Montgomery Academy in St. James sweep. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
St. James coach Keith Lucky has been waiting all season to see his team’s play match its potential.
On Thursday and Friday, the Trojans showed up for the Class 3A Area 5 opener with Montgomery Academy, sweeping the two-game series from the Eagles to take the lead in the area standings.
“I knew coming into this season I had an experienced bunch,” Lucky said. “I challenged them at the beginning of the year. Sometimes, I second-guess myself … but we tried to play the best competition around to try and challenge these guys and just didn’t get wins.
“The thing that I love about this team right now is it looks like that hasn’t affected them. (Thursday) and today shows they’ve still got some fight in them.”
The Trojans followed up Thursday’s 8-6 win over the Eagles at Montgomery Academy with a hard-fought 4-3 win on Friday at St. James to improve to 2-0 in the area race.
“I saw us battle, more than we have all year long,” Lucky said. “It looks like the switch is starting to turn on. I don’t want to say that too quick because we have been snakebit most of the season. We have flashes of brilliance, then it just dissipates, so I’m glad to see us win some tight ballgames.”
Alabama Christian and Prattville Christian split their series and are both 1-1, followed by Montgomery Academy at 0-2.
“We know we’re not out of it, we just have a steeper hill to climb,” said Montgomery Academy coach Brad Parker. “Our guys competed hard. We fell just short, two runs (on Thursday), one run today. We made a few mistakes late (on Thursday). Today, our guys came out with the right mindset. (Starting pitcher) Reid (McBride) did a good job on the mound.”
McBride took the loss, giving up all three hits to the Trojans in the second inning. Charlie Cutler led off with a double and scored on a double by Grant Goff. Goff and courtesy runner Caleb James scored on a two-out single to right field by Mason Craig for a 3-0 lead.
Montgomery Academy tied the game in the third on an RBI single by McBride, a groundout by Hays Marks and a double by Finley Haigler, two of the six hits off of Trojan pitchers. The Eagles would get singles in each of the next three innings but couldn’t get a run across.
“I think their starter (Michael Hassell) was a little off early, then he settled in,” Parker said. “His ball was running really hard, coming in on our right-handed batters. We saw (reliever Luke) Catchings (on Thursday). He did a good job in relief for them yesterday, then did a good job for them today. We just weren’t able to get the run across late in the game. We had chances, just didn’t take advantage of them.”
St. James scored the game-winning run in the fourth after Catchings reached base on an error and later scored on a sacrifice fly by Craig.
The second game of Friday’s doubleheader doesn’t count in the area standings, but would be used as a tiebreaker should the two teams finish tied in the area standings. McBride went 2 for 4. scored twice and drove in a pair of runs and William Marks went 2 for 4 and scored twice to lead the Eagles to a 7-6 win over the Trojans.
Nathaniel Shaw picked up the win for the Eagles, allowing five hits on five runs, three earned, over three innings.
Montgomery Academy (12-12) will resume the area race next Thursday at Prattville Christian before hosting the Panthers in a Friday doubleheader. St. James (8-12) will travel to the AUM Baseball Complex on Thursday to play Alabama Christian before hosting the Eagles on Friday.