Champs again! Providence gets off to big start, beats South Meck for conference title
South Mecklenburg High’s baseball team really needed a win Thursday in its regular-season finale against rival Providence.
Sitting in third place in the SoMECK7 4A, the Sabres had to upset the Panthers to give themselves a good shot at making the playoffs. And just their luck, they’d be playing at home.
But the Panthers were also motivated to win an outright league title and not share one with Ardrey Kell. Providence jumped out to a big early lead and won 7-3. The Panthers won their sixth straight league crown.
Providence did it with offense, jumping out to a 6-0 lead by the bottom of the first inning, before the Sabres even had time to put their batting gloves on.
“We just got in a big hole early,” South Meck head coach Brian Hoop said. “We got a freshman pitcher (Cam Bagwell), and we just kind of messed up a few little individual defensive things there.
“To a team like Providence, you just can’t make mistakes.”
And in the beginning, even if the Sabres weren’t making mistakes — even if the Panthers were the ones making them — it didn’t look like enough.
For example, Sabres’ catcher Ivan Juez capitalized on a Providence throwing error in the bottom of the second and stole home from third base. But in the third inning, Panthers outfielder Jack Prosser hit a single, was driven to third by an extra-base hit from shortstop Sammy Dansky, and then sent home, thanks to a Jacob Russak sacrifice fly.
The six-run lead was back.
“I thought we did a really good job taking advantage of them for three innings,” Providence coach Danny Hignight said. “And then I thought we did a really poor job of staying engaged in the game and doing our jobs.”
It started when the Sabres made a pitching change part way through the third inning, replacing reliever Jeffery Batista with Kewan Braziel, who started the game in right field.
“Kewan’s our Swiss Army knife, man, like he can do anything,” Hoop said. “We play him all over the field. He’s our starter. He’s a relief pitcher.”
And in more than three innings on the mound, Braziel showed why his team trusts him so much, keeping the Panthers scoreless for the rest of the game and giving an opportunity for the Sabres’ offense to hit back.
In the bottom of the fifth, with one out and a man on base, Sabres’ junior second baseman Nick Armstrong took Panthers reliever Vance Barnhill deep, sending a shot careening over the left-field wall for a two-run homer. That shot got South Meck to within four, at 7-3.
Maybe that would be the jump start Armstrong hoped it would be.
“It was my first (home run) of the season and that was really meant to spark the team up to now get those runs back on the board,” Armstrong said.
In the sixth inning, Braziel made even more magic happen, slapping a double to left field that brought teammate Sully Freer to third. With two runners aboard and no outs, South had a small chance to make a rally to keep its postseason hopes alive.
But a pop up and a double play ended the inning, and it probably ended the Sabres’ season.
“I feel really proud of our boys for fighting in the back half,” Hoop said. “With the way we played on Tuesday (also against Providence) and the beating they put on us then, to turn around and come back and have some resilience and fight to get back in the game. We were down early. Shows a lot about the kids.”
Want more photos?
More photos from the game from Observer correspondent Jonathan Aguallo are at this link: https://bit.ly/35gqpl3
This story was originally published June 11, 2021 at 6:30 AM.
