Bulldogs look to shake off slide against Zebras today
WHITE HALL — Just before leaving his classroom for practice, Shane Harp talked about his plans for helping his young White Hall baseball team grow up.
“I’m fixing to tighten it up a lot,” the fifth-year skipper said. “We’re fixing to get down and dirty. It’s going to be a silent practice. The only people talking will be the coaches. We’re not growing up on the field, so I’m fixing to teach them how to grow up in other areas to try to make practice more competitive. The only thing we can do is get better.”
The Bulldogs (2-8, 0-3 in 5A-South) don’t have to wait long for another shot at jumping into the 5A-South Conference win column.
Long a perennial power in Class 5A with two state championships in the past decade, the Bulldogs hope to snap out of a six-game slide today against Pine Bluff (15, 1-2) at Taylor Field. First pitch for the game, moved up a day to avoid Good Friday, is scheduled for 5 p.m.
It will be the third game this week for the Bulldogs, who are coming off a 12-4 home loss to Hot Springs Lakeside (10-1, 3-0) on Tuesday and lost 10-0 at Conway on Monday.
“We’re having that one inning that seems like every game, the wheels fall off,” Harp said. “We’ve got to grow up. We’ve got to mature. We’ve got talent on the team, but we’re losing a lot of games with a lot of unearned runs, which means we’re making too many errors. When we have a bad inning, it makes a difference.”
Lakeside broke a 1-1 tie with two runs each in the fourth through sixth innings and five in the seventh. The Rams capitalized on five Bulldog errors, all during that stretch.
Caleb Taylor (double), Carson Terrell, Lucas Gray and Noah Smith each had a hit for White Hall, a team with only four seniors out of 21 varsity players.
Aaron Warriner, who threw four innings Tuesday and struck out four, is the lone senior on the infield when he plays third base. His catcher, Smith, is a freshman.
White Hall last won a game March 15 against former conference rival Watson Chapel, 6-5. Pine Bluff, which suffered a 2-1 loss at Lake Hamilton on Tuesday, is looking for its first win since blanking Hot Springs High 11-0 on March 16.
Pine Bluff and White Hall have combined to win 13 state championships in their history, with the Zebras’ most recent title coming in 1995. White Hall last won it all in 2014 and was runner-up to Harrison in 2015.
The shortened 2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic did not give the returning players what Harp calls “that maturity level” going into this season.
“We’ve got ninth graders and 10th graders, the majority of them who didn’t get to play last year,” Harp said. “That’s no excuse because other teams are in the same boat. I think we’ve got the talent. We’ve got to cut down on the errors. We’ve got to grow up at the plate. Once we click, we’ll be fine.”
White Hall has 15 games remaining (11 in the 5A-South), plenty of time to organize a turnaround in what Harp considers his most challenging season yet as a skipper. Just two years removed from a state semifinal finish, he likes to schedule big-name non-conference opponents between some conference games to help his team grow up.
“I’ve never been in this position before, even when I was JV coach,” Harp said of the slow start. “I always wanted to play the bigger teams. We competed and won some of those games. Our pitching staff has done their job. We’re just not doing the job everywhere else.”