Historic season for Red Bay baseball ends in playoffs semifinals
It was an historic campaign for the Red Bay High School varsity baseball team in 2024, a year that saw the Tigers reach the semifinals of the playoffs for the first time since 1987. The remarkable season came to an end last week when Red Bay was knocked out of the postseason by Mars Hill in two games, but there is pride and enthusiasm surrounding the Tigers’ baseball program.
“If you had asked anybody at the start of the season if we’d have been in the semifinals with a chance to go play for a state championship, I don’t know if a lot of people would’ve believed that—and I don’t know if a lot of people in our room would’ve believed that,” said third year Red Bay head coach Donovan Hand. “Thirty-seven years is a long time since the last time Red Bay was in the final four.”
“Anytime you can do something like this and bring good attention to your program, it makes everybody excited from the top down,” Hand added. “The fun part for us is a lot of people are supporting us, the kids are getting a lot of notoriety and a lot of fun out of it. You want to be task-oriented but you want to have fun, and (the players) are getting both sides of that. I’m proud of our program, for our players in the program, and to have success like this.”
Red Bay’s playoff run started in round one against Lamar County, a series the Tigers swept 6-3, 2-1. There were some nerves to overcome during the first playoff game, Hand said, but it didn’t take long for the Tigers to settle down and just play baseball.
“We went to Lamar County and we were very nervous,” he said. “It was uncharted territory for this group of kids and for us on the coaching staff—it was the first time I’ve been in the playoffs as a coach. You could definitely tell there were some nerves.”
“I think (the nerves) went away after the first game, and I think you could probably say after the first few innings of the first game. We came out and had a few hits early and just stranded some runners, but then about the third or fourth inning of the game, we just tried to relax and simplify things,” he added. “We were able to put three or four runs on the board, knock their starter out, get a couple more runs later, and after that first game you could feel the exhale and the feeling of, you know, we can do this.”
Red Bay took game one on the back of five solid innings of work from starting pitcher Jeramiah Thorne before the Tigers won game two 2-1 in wild walk-off fashion.
“We faced a really good arm in game two and were able to pull out a victory on a walk-off hit-by-pitch of all things,” Hand said. “It was just a weird turn of events to get us to that point, but after that I felt like we felt like we belonged and knew what to expect.”
Advancing to the second round, the Tigers played host to North Sand Mountain with continuing success, sweeping the Bison 7-6, 15-0. The energy for the series in Red Bay, Hand said, was palpable.
“The crowd was electric and we had people putting out chairs on Wednesday and Thursday beforehand,” he said. “There was and still is a lot of excitement around the program and there was an unbelievable turnout.”
It was another walk-off win for the Tigers in the first game against North Sand Mountain, this one in extra innings but scored under more conventional circumstances. After a leadoff double by Landyn Lewey in the bottom half of the eighth, Lewey advanced to third on a wild pitch and then was scratched across with a bunt RBI by Jeramiah Robinson.
For that extra inning in the first game Red Bay took two off in the second one, using a seven-run first inning to rout the Bison 15-0 and advance to the quarterfinals for the first time since 2019.
Red Bay’s challenger in the quarterfinals would be the toughest to that point. Traveling to Whitesburg Christian Academy, the Tigers dropped game one 2-0 and had to battle with their backs against the wall to keep their postseason dreams alive.
“We knew this was going to be our first big test, as far as going on the road against a perennially good team,” Hand said. “They were in the playoffs last year and made a pretty good run themselves, so we knew it was going to be a good game.”
“We lost the first game 2-0. (Whitesburg Christian) did an unbelievable job pitching, and was just really giving us a lot of trouble. We were just never able to get that big hit we needed, and so it ended 2-0,” he added. “Now we’ve got to face adversity for the first time in the playoffs.”
Adversity is right. But in back-to-back win-or-go-home situations, Red Bay’s players delivered. The Tigers bounced back to win the second game 3-0 and got a special performance to help them take the rubber match the following day 8-2.
“Ty Reynolds and some others had a very good second game. (Reynolds) took a no-hitter into the seventh and we played well enough to win,” Hand said.
“In game three, we came out with a guy who has pitched some for us this year but hasn’t been in a big role for us—he started some games on Mondays before area games,” he added. “Ayden Pruitt goes out and pitches seven innings on 103 pitches, gives up two runs, hits his first home run of the year. He had one of those games that you look for this time of year and it was just a special day for him and the team.”
“We played all three aspects of the game very well and felt like we were the better team and showed it. So that was a big step for us,” Hand said.
The final stop for Red Bay in its playoff journey was Florence where the Tigers faced a familiar foe, Area 16 rival and champion Mars Hill. Red Bay intended to reverse its fortunes against the Panthers, who swept the Tigers during regular season play, but the trend, unfortunately for the visitors, continued. Mars Hill defeated Red Bay 4-1 and 6-2, concluding the Tigers’ memorable postseason jaunt.
“A lot of people asked me, ‘What happened at Mars Hill?’ Well, nothing happened—we just got beat,” Hand said. “Mars Hill’s pitchers did a good job. We put the ball in play but every time we hit it hard we hit it right at them. They had some timely hitting that took those games away from us. They were two very good baseball games. Very competitive, clean play on both sides.”
“We made some noise in that second game, but we never could get the big hit. That’s when you have to tip your hat to the other team,” he added. “It was a great run.”
In the record books, Red Bay will go down with a 21-9 overall record and a final four appearance, a laudable year—in hindsight. But, as Hand previously mentioned, the Tigers’ terrific season wasn’t exactly predicted. A 21-9 record is a commendable one, but at one point early in the campaign the Tigers were sitting at 5-5, and Hand thought a sit down with the team might be in order.
Printing off the stat sheets, Hand showed his players all the areas they could improve in—areas of the game that they could control. The Tigers, Hand said, were giving away too many free bases on walks or hit batters and not giving themselves a chance with too many strikeouts. It was time to cut those out.
“We tried to simplify things. On the hitting side, we were striking out too much, taking big swings and trying to hit the ball out of the yard instead of taking our singles and doubles,” he said. “We still wanted to take our swings, but now with two strikes let's put the ball in play and if we’ve put pressure on the defense then we’ve done a good job.”
“The pitching part being better contributed to the fielding part being better,” Hand added. “Now, all of a sudden, you’re not walking two or three guys and the guys (in the field) aren’t out there on their heels. It makes a big difference.”
Improvement is what Hand wanted to see and improvement is what Hand got. After losing five out of six games to start the month of March, Red Bay went on a 10-1 march to close out the regular season. But Hand also wanted accountability from his players and for them to start taking ownership of their own play. He got that, too.
“Now, the first part of our schedule was tough, so that explains a little bit of it. Out of our five losses, four were to area champions in our classification or higher, but at the same time, we identified some stuff on the field that was not beneficial to us and things we could control,” Hand said. “After that team meeting…we walked fewer guys in the last 18 games than we did the first 10. We struck out fewer times in the last 18 games than we did in the first 10. When you clean up things like that, it gives you more opportunities to get hits, get runners on base, and it also takes opportunities away from the other team.”
“Once they started worrying about the things they could control instead of everything else, it kept everybody accountable,” Hand said.
From there, as the saying goes, the rest is history and Red Bay ended up making some. Now, Hand said, with the season over it’s once again time to start looking to the future. In Donovan Hand’s guidebook to making Red Bay relevant in baseball again, Year Three in his plan was a “get to the playoffs and see what happens” year. Well, a lot happened, and the trains appear to be running on time.
“Year one we knew we had a lot of work to do. There were a lot of growing pains and we were throwing a lot of information at these guys. A lot of times stuff didn’t make sense, but we felt as a coaching staff if we stayed on the path and the players bought in, we thought year two would be competitive,” Hand said. “Then year three would be the year we took that next step and started the snowball down the hill of a long time of good baseball in Red Bay.”
“As a coaching staff it’s good to see a plan come to fruition and take shape, but it’s also a testament to our players for believing in us as coaches and the things we were showing them and trying to get them to buy into. They did that and they ran with it,” he added. “There are a lot of factors that play into this, but as a program as a whole, this was as good a step as you can take without winning a state championship.”
“For this group of players, before now they haven’t really had any success in baseball and it’s been a long time coming. They were put into a situation where they had to play early in their high school careers and were honestly just overmatched physically, but they’re starting to mature and grow up. The future is very, very bright and we’ve got a chance to be really good for quite a few years in a row,” Hand said. “So as far as program status goes, we’re as good as it can be right now. Everybody is excited about baseball in Red Bay and that’s what we want. Now that this season is over, we can dig in and work on next year to make it as good or even better than we were this year.”