‘All In’ Golden Tigers see off Sardis in three games to advance to playoff's second round
For the 10th straight season, the Russellville High School varsity baseball team will be one of the last 16 teams standing in the Class 5A playoffs. The Golden Tigers, ranked No. 10 in the final Alabama Sports Writers Association poll of the season, took two of three games in their first round series against Sardis High School to advance to the second round.
Going into the opening round of postseason play, the Golden Tigers knew Sardis, the Area 13 runner-up which finished the regular season with a 19-8 record, would be a difficult out.
“Those guys are tough as nails,” Russellville head coach Jess Smith said of Sardis. “We knew going in that they were a very good offensive team and their run production was outstanding. The season they had wasn’t a fluke; they showed that against proven opponents.”
The Golden Tigers came out triumphant in the end in large part, Smith said, because of great pitching and the solid defense behind it.
“They (Sardis’ batters) have solid approaches and they don’t strike out a lot. They’re not just good at putting the ball in play but they can do damage,” he said. “With our scouting report going in, we knew we needed to execute off-speed pitches in advantageous counts, execute those pitches and get a ground ball and that’s where the defensive side of things comes in. Our pitchers have the ability to locate and command those pitches but know they don’t have to go chasing strikeouts; they can miss barrels and get a ground ball and know their defense is behind them to make the play.
“Whether its (Brayden) Entrekin or (Ty) Engelthaler or Tripp (Cleveland) or any of the other guys—Brayden Hatton, Jackson Smith, Caleb Hawkins—who didn’t have to pitch this series, we know the guys we can put out there on the mound make us very difficult to beat in a three-game series,” Smith added.
In game one, played on Thursday, April 23, Russellville defeated Sardis 10-1 to gain an early series advantage.
Led by the bat of junior Caleb Hawkins, the Golden Tigers took an early lead and added onto it throughout the contest while starting pitcher Brayden Entrekin, with his defense backing him, shut down the Lions’ offense.
The Golden Tigers scored two runs in the bottom half of the first inning to take an initial 2-0 lead when Tristan Ray drove in Bryson Cooper with an RBI single to center field and Hawkins’ groundout brought in Malaki Groce from third base.
Russellville then struck for five more runs in the third inning to go up 7-1. An RBI single by Ray was followed up with a bases-clearing single by Hawkins to give RHS a 6-1 lead before Jackson Smith’s sacrifice bunt allowed Tripp Cleveland to score from third base for the inning’s final run.
Later, in the fifth inning, RHS tacked on a solo run thanks to another hit by Hawkins that scored pinch runner Darron Jones. The Golden Tigers rounded out the scoring in their next at-bat when Entrekin’s two-run double to center made it a 10-1 game.
In addition to Hawkins’ five RBIs, Cooper and Ray collected three hits apiece; Ray and Entrekin finished with two RBIs each.
On the mound, Entrekin tossed a complete game, allowing one earned run off eight hits while recording six strikeouts. Sardis’ one run came in the top of the third inning, but the Golden Tigers avoided further damage when, with one out and the bases loaded, their defense turned a 4-6-3 double play to end the threat.
Game two, also played on Thursday, saw Russellville’s fortunes turn, however, as the Lions went on to win the game 4-2.
All four of Sardis’ runs in game two were supplied by center fielder Levi Martin, who hit two two-run homers for the Lions. Martin’s first home run, which came in the first inning, put the Lions up 2-0 before his second in the third made it a 4-1 game.
Other than those two homers, Russellville’s starting pitcher, senior Ty Engelthaler, gave up very little. Engelthaler allowed just four hits through six innings and ended up with six strikeouts.
Smith praised Engelthaler, a Central Alabama Community College signee, for his execution on the mound, calling it “arguably, on the stat sheet, the best outing” among his starting pitchers’ “three tremendous outings” of the series.
Talking to the Franklin Free Press after the series, Smith took some of the blame for the loss Engelthaler was hit with.
“That wasn’t Ty Engelthaler’s loss, that was my loss,” Smith said. “Our scouting report was ‘don’t let Levi Martin beat you.’ Ty gave up four earned runs on four hits but two of those hits and all four runs were on Levi Martin’s home runs. I should’ve done a better job pitch calling. I think I gave Ty a bad hand and I want to take ownership of that. He pitched outstanding, but I didn’t put him in a good position to get those outs.
“My belief in my pitching staff and my defense always prevails over the scouting report, so it’s hard for me, when making those decisions in the moment, to believe an opposing hitter can beat one of our pitchers,” he added. “That’s something that I need to navigate better, but I’ll never apologize for believing in our guys and what they can do because they’ve proven it.
“Unfortunately, those two swings (by Martin) ended up giving Engelthaler the loss, but if you look at what he did the entire game, he was tremendous and ultimately gave our offense an opportunity to win that baseball game.”
Offensively, Russellville was just unable to produce the runs needed to overcome the early deficit.
“We outhit Sardis 7-4, but we didn’t have the timely hit or the consecutive hits when we needed them,” Smith said.
With the series knotted up at one game apiece, the Golden Tigers and Lions would have to play a tie-breaking game three on Friday afternoon. The winner-take-all contest, the lowest-scoring of the three, required a late offensive surge by the Golden Tigers for them to come out on top.
The game, a pitching duel throughout, went scoreless through three innings before Sardis drew first blood in the top of the fourth.
The Lions, who loaded up the bases with three straight singles to start the inning, put RHS starting pitcher Tripp Cleveland in a jam, but the Golden Tiger defense came through with a massive 5-2-3 double play to relieve the pressure. Sardis was able to plate one run on a single in the next at-bat, but the Golden Tigers exited the inning without any further injury done. That double play would prove to be a key moment.
Down 1-0 now, Russellville found a response, tying the game up in the home half of the fourth.
The Golden Tigers, flipping the script on the Sardis defense, loaded up the bases with no outs after singles by Hawkins and Cleveland and a walk drawn by Brayden Hatton. But just like the hosts, Sardis was able to turn two to ease the tension: Luke Greenhill’s infield grounder was enough to drive in Hawkins from third base, but the Lions’ 6-4-3 double play allowed them to get out of the inning after a ground out in the next at-bat.
After evening things up, the decisive breakthrough for Russellville finally came in the bottom of the sixth inning.
A Tristan Ray double to lead off the inning was followed up by a single by Hawkins to put runners on the corners. Then, in the next plate appearance, Cleveland helped himself out with the go-ahead two-run single to give RHS a 3-1 advantage. A little later, Greenhill would add an insurance run for the Golden Tigers on an RBI double that scored pinch runner Kiefer Hallmark from third.
Going into the top of the seventh, now just needing just three outs to clinch the series, Cleveland and the Golden Tiger defense behind him took care of business.
Sardis was able to make things interesting with a one-out single, followed by two walks (one intentional to Sardis’ game two hero Martin) to load the bases with two outs. But Gavin Holland’s groundout to Hawkins at shortstop ended the game, stranding three Lions and punching Russellville’s ticket to the next round.
“I don’t think any coach in America would prefer to go to in the sixth inning knotted up 1-1 as opposed to what we did in game one, but if you are going into that situation, in an elimination game, you want what we did (Friday) without question,” Smith said. “It takes resilience, it takes belief, it takes confidence—all the ingredients you need for a championship recipe to come together when your season is on the line.
“In the series as a whole, we experienced a little bit of everything, from the highs of a big win (in game one) to the low of dropping one and then being in the situation of playing a must-win game three where the tension and the stakes are high,” he said. “I can’t say enough about our team’s effort this round and everything they did to make the series win possible.”
To those familiar with the Russellville baseball program over the years, the Golden Tigers advancing in the playoffs would seem a perfunctory act. But just over a month ago, in mid-March, one would be forgiven for doubting if RHS would even make the postseason.
After a 15-0 defeat to Hazel Green on March 14, the Golden Tigers boasted just three wins to 12 losses, the same number of defeats RHS had all of last season. To be fair, Russellville’s early schedule was a brutal one which involved many of the best baseball programs in the state, but Smith admitted his squad had a “tough, tough start.” The Golden Tigers, he said, were, many times, beaten by none other than the Golden Tigers themselves.
“Reflecting on the 3-12 start, we did a lot of things that teams that don’t win baseball games do,” Smith said. “A lot of those losses were inflicted by the Golden Tigers.”
But after suffering that blowout defeat to Hazel Green, a switch, somewhere, was flipped, and Russellville turned everything around in the second half of its season. The Golden Tigers went on to win 16 of their final 18 games of the regular season, including nine of their 10 area contests en route to reclaiming the area crown.
“These guys could’ve easily mailed it in, let the negativity win, lost faith, lost belief, but they didn’t,” Smith said.
Now Russellville is making its 13th trip to the round of 16 since 2007.
In attributing the turnaround, the RHS head coach pointed to the team’s “rallying cry” for this season, a motto—or a philosophy, if you will—that the Golden Tigers continued to trust and turn to every day: “All In.”
“What we proclaim and what we ‘break it down’ on is ‘All In,’ but what I hear several guys saying before we do break it down is, ‘say it like you mean it,’” Smith said. “Being ‘All In’ encompasses a lot: it’s the belief in yourself, it’s belief in your teammates, it’s belief in our plan and approach, and it’s the attitude we try to possess that we don’t hope to win, we expect to win; it’s dominating your approach, doing your job every day with intensity and toughness. So going back to starting 3-12 to then going 18-3 after that, it’s these guys embodying what it means to be ‘All In.’”
That, for Smith—after comparing how the 2026 campaign began to where the Golden Tigers now, and acknowledging what his players did to make it happen—is what make the series win over Sardis so sweet.
“When you add to how tough our start (to the year) was and throw in how tough Sardis was—I mean, they didn’t back down, their coaches had a great plan, and the whole series was really an all out war from pitch to pitch—and then to do what our guys did, with their backs against the wall—for us and our locker room, it encompasses a lot of what this season means to us,” he said. “I can get emotional talking about how difficult this season was but how that didn’t deter our guys from believing in our mission and what we can do and what we did do in this postseason when everything was on the line.
“It’s up there if not the proudest moment I’ve had during my tenure here and as a head coach in general,” he added.
Up next in the second round, the Golden Tigers will travel to face American Christian Academy, which eliminated John Carroll Catholic in two games. At the time Smith was talking to the FFP, the Golden Tigers did not yet know their second round opponent, but the opponent, the head coach said, isn’t what matters.
“Whoever our opponent is, what matters is the belief and the confidence of those guys in the locker room and execution,” he said. “Let the coaching staff work on our scouting report, but (the players’) main focus is on executing what we do at the highest level. When our guys trust that, it’s proven to be really special.”