Phoenix end season with 3 versus Cedartown
The Sonoraville High School baseball team will finish the regular season this week when the Phoenix play Cedartown in a Region 7-4A threegame series.
Last year when the teams met in the final days of the 2023 season, they were both vying for a Region championship. This week, they're both fighting to get into the playoffs with the Phoenix maybe needing a trio of wins to reach the postseason.
That's because the Phoenix entered this week as the fifth team in the Region after a pair of tough losses to league-leading Heritage last week in the first two contests in their threegame set.
They dropped a tough 2-1 decision to the Generals at The Furnace on Monday and then lost a 3-2 heartbreaker at Heritage on Wednesday with the third and final game of the week set for Friday back at Heritage. The team also had a makeup game Saturday afternoon against Southeast Whitfield County. (Details of those games were not available at press time).
The losses sent them to 3-7 in Region 7-4A and they are now a couple of games out of the fourth and last playoff spot going into the final week of the year.
On the other side for Heritage, the two victories kept them in first place in the Region with a 9-2 record and kept them two games ahead of second-place Northwest Whitfield, which was 7-4. Cedartown was right on the Bruins' heels with a 6-4 record while Central is alone in fourth place at 6-5.
Then the Phoenix are in fifth place while Southeast Whitfield is in sixth place and was still winless in league play.
Before the tough losses to Heritage this past week, the Phoenix ended last weekend by splitting two games against Christian Heritage.
Last Friday at The Furnace, the
Phoenix dropped a hardfought 4-3 decision to the Lions that ended a fourgame losing streak when a late-inning rally came up just short. But they quickly put that behind them on Saturday when they went to Dalton and won for the fifth time in their previous six games with a 10-0 romp over the Lions.
In that loss on Friday, Heritage Christian looked like they might win rather easily, touching home plate three times before Sonoraville even came to bat. But after falling behind 3-0 after a half-inning of play, the Big Red made a ballgame of it.
It stayed 3-zip until top of the fifth when HC scored its last run to make it 4-nothing, but the Phoenix made
things tight in their final two at-bats.
That chopped that 4-0 lead in half with a pair of runs in the bottom of the sixth inning and then would add one more in the seventh inning to get within a run. But they could not push the tying run across.
On Saturday, they picked up where they left on Friday with some early offense en route to one of its easiest wins of the year.
Besides the SonoravilleCedartown series, the other two Region 7-4A threegames series to end the regular season have Heritage
playing Northwest Whitfield and Central taking on Southeast Whitfield.
For the four teams that held the top four spots heading into this week, all they needed to do was keep winning and they will be in. But the Phoenix were hoping there was enough time and room left for them to make it in as well.
Cedartown got back into the middle of the playoff picture last week by knocking off Northwest Whitfield three straight games and the Bruins had won 15 of their first 17 games prior to that first losing streak of the spring.
The Sonoraville game with Cedartown on Monday is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. while the teams are scheduled to play a doubleheader at The Furnace Thursday, April 18 with a 5 p.m. first pitch.
The Phoenix are 10-11 on the season.