Golden Tigers take two of three from Red Devils in first area series
Over the course of three days, the Russellville High School varsity baseball team took two of three vital games from the Lawrence County Red Devils, capturing the Golden Tigers’ first area series win of the season.
Relief and pride were head coach Jess Smith’s immediate reactions following his team’s 9-3 win in game one on March 12. Relief because the Golden Tigers finally got that first area game out of the way—and won, of course. Pride because of his players’ performance and their response after what was, for some of the players, an “unusual” game day.
“It’s just a massive relief, you know? Always leading up to area play it’s nerve racking,” Smith said. “Tensions are high and, you know, (area play) is consequential. Up to this point you basically say (after a loss), well, we’ll learn from it. The message would still be the same if we got beat tonight, but anybody would be lying to you if they said it didn’t feel good to go and get the first one.”
“I’m super proud of (the players). It was a bit of a different day with juniors taking the ACT, our seniors had a real world seminar. In my experience as a head coach your guys can kind of be drained or like zombies on days like that, but we showed up with intensity. I was really, really proud of that.”
A five-run first inning is sure to help relax any pre-game jitters and energize a dugout, and that’s exactly what Russellville got. After starting pitcher Cayden Johns retired the Red Devils in order in the top of the inning, the Golden Tigers took advantage of some erratic pitching and strung together a few hits to punish the visitors early.
“Even though there were some nerves it was good to see our guys throw the first punch, so to speak,” Smith said. “We capitalized on some of their mistakes and had really good at-bats. I know there were some (hit batters) in the first inning, but whenever it was time to hit the ball, we hit it and whenever it was time to take our walks, we took our walks. Some guys had a really good day.”
A walk, a single, and a hit batter quickly loaded the bases before Daniel Askew scored on a passed ball to score the game’s first run. Compounded Lawrence County mistakes then brought in Brandt Cummings before Brodie Vandiver and Brayden Entrekin hit back-to-back RBI singles.
Vandiver and Entrekin were two players Smith acknowledged for their performances in the batter’s box.
"Brodie Vandiver has kind of been struggling at the plate here lately but he got back hot today,” Smith said. “Brayden Entrekin, you know, is an eighth grader. It was his second start, first time in area play…he came up with two big RBIs. I think he’s going to be a special kid.”
Lawrence County got on the board with two runs in the second inning. Johns surrendered a single and a double to lead off the inning, putting the Red Devils in position to knock them in on sacrifice flies to make it 5-2.
Russellville answered back with a run in the bottom half of the inning and then three more in the third. An RBI single by Eli Boutwell scored Neyland Baker in the second inning. In the third, Vandiver scored on an error and Cummings capped the scoring for the Golden Tigers with a two-RBI single up the middle.
Lawrence County tacked on its third and final run in the sixth inning with a home run over the right field wall.
On the bump, Cayden Johns’ night came to a close after the sixth. The righty earned the win and finished the game with five hits and three earned runs allowed, two strikeouts, and two walks. It wasn’t Johns’ best performance of the season, but Smith said he had a solid, reassuring outing.
“Cayden Johns had a good day on the mound. It wasn’t his A-plus stuff, right? But we tell our pitching staff, we don’t judge you off your A-plus performances. We judge you off your B-minus, your C-plus performances. If you can still win on those days, you have arrived as a pitcher,” Smith said. “I thought today was probably Johns’ B-minus, maybe C-plus stuff, but he competed his tail off and that’s huge, especially when it comes to area play. You don’t have to depend on your guys having their best arsenal, so to speak, every game, so it was good to see that from him.”
Ty Engelthaler came in in relief to pitch the final inning. With two outs, Engelthaler found himself in a bases loaded situation but pitched his way out of it without any damage. He ended the game with a strikeout and a fist pump.
“(Engelthaler) was able to limit the damage there and get us out of the game,” Smith said.
A turned double play would’ve ended the game sooner, but the call was overturned by the home plate umpire. Smith disagreed with the decision but found a silver lining.
“It was good to put him in that situation,” he said. “At this level of baseball and this stage of the season when you’re playing area, no lead is safe. It could be one swing and your back is against the wall. I think that’s going to be a good growing moment for him going forward."
The series continued on March 14 with games two and three at Lawrence County. It turned out to be anything but a typical doubleheader.
Game two of the series was nothing to write home about for the Golden Tigers. Lawrence County run-ruled Russellville 13-0, putting crooked numbers up on the scoreboard every inning. The visitors finished with five errors and only three hits to their name. It wasn’t the ideal performance coming off a big win two days earlier, but Smith knew going in Russellville was going to get the Red Devils’ best shot.
“We knew we had our hands full going into Thursday. They’re a team that can swing it and they had their best arms lined up against us,” he said. “Everything that could’ve went wrong kind of did, combined with tipping your hat to Lawrence County. They played really, really tough and induced a lot of those mistakes we made.”
It was a game to forget, but Russellville didn’t have much time to forget it with the decisive rubber match looming.
“You drop game two and you’ve got 25 minutes to get your mind right and get ready for the first pitch of a must-win game,” Smith said. “That’s pressure baseball at its finest.”
Russellville didn’t drown under the pressure, however. More like goldfish, the Golden Tigers appeared to forget all about the last game, or at least played like they did, riding a wave of 10 hits to six runs in the first four innings.
“For me, watching our guys respond like they did, that was probably my biggest takeaway from this series,” Smith said. “There was pressure and there’s no denying that—our guys felt it going into that third game. I just asked them to, with that pressure, play together, lean on each other, depend on each other…compete and try to win every pitch. I thought we did a good job of that.”
A Johns RBI single in the top of the first knocked in Brandt Cummings for the game’s first run. In the next inning, Russellville added two more runs with back-to-back RBI singles from Gage Sappington and Daniel Askew to make it 3-0.
A three-run fourth inning capped the scoring for Russellville. A leadoff walk led to Askew’s RBI triple into left field. An RBI double by Cummings, a single by Neyland Baker, and then a balk to advance Cummings home from third accounted for the final two runs.
It was then that Mother Nature decided to get involved. After a weather delay the game was halted for the night and then eventually scheduled to pick up again the next evening at a different location, Deshler High School. The Golden Tigers had a six-run lead, but the stoppage added another ingredient to the pressure cooker.
“Unfortunately we have the split (days) where the game is suspended so that just brings another element of anxiety and the unknown of, ‘where are we going to get this game finished?’” Smith said. “Friday around midday we go to our guys and say, ‘hey, we found a location, we’re playing tonight, and we’ve got to win,’ you know?”
It was a different day and a different location, but the result in the final three innings didn’t differ much from the first four when play resumed. The Golden Tigers didn’t manage a hit for the remainder of the game but, in the end, didn’t need any. Russellville’s pitching staff shut down Lawrence County on both sides of the storm.
Tripp Cleveland started game three on the mound for the Golden Tigers and came up with a huge performance in a pivotal moment, Smith bragged.
“He’s a freshman and we put the ball in his hands in his first area series after we just got run-ruled by a team. He comes in and through three innings only allowed two hits,” Smith said. “We only called one or two offspeed pitches in those three innings so that just means he was attacking hitters with fastballs and letting the defense make the plays. Our success in that game started with Tripp, no doubt.”
Another young arm, Brayden Entrekin, came in in relief and continued right where Cleveland left off.
“He did amazing. He did everything we asked him to, and he got a one-two-three inning to start off his varsity career in area play,” Smith said. “We told him we weren’t asking him to strike them out. We asked him to place a few pitches and give the defense the opportunity to get them out and he did that, which was huge for our team.”
“It’s certainly a bright spot when you have two young guys stepping up for us like they did and it makes me extremely proud of them,” Smith added of Cleveland and Entrekin.
Lawrence County ended the shutout with a single run in the bottom of the seventh, but the Golden Tigers' six runs proved more than enough to secure the important victory and claim the series.
“All of (the area series) are big, but this one is huge,” Smith said. “I think this team learned they have some toughness about them that maybe had been in question. Anytime you respond to getting run-ruled on the road and then turning around and basically shutting down your opponent, that takes an elite level of toughness, no matter what level of the game you’re playing.”
“I think the takeaway is we do have the ability to be touched, but it’s imperative for us to show up with that blue collar worker’s mentality and, no matter the circumstances, know we’re going to roll up our sleeves, take it one pitch at a time, and be where our feet are.”