Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Will Phillips
Bears score 5 runs on 7 hits; Bulldogs strand 11 runners
FAYETTEVILLE — Spring Hill came up with the clutch hits on a damp Saturday afternoon. Conway St. Joseph did not.
Junior shortstop Will Phillips had three hits and drove in two runs as the Bears captured a 5-0 victory over the Bulldogs in the Class 2A state baseball championship game at Baum Stadium.
Spring Hill (25-9), which earned its first baseball state title, made the most of seven hits while St. Joseph (17-10) left 11 runners stranded.
“If we can just get kids on base, good things are bound to happen,” Spring Hill Coach Rusty Winfield said. “I told our kids, with the pitch count we have now, if we could just keep the ball in play we’d have a good chance.”
Spring Hill scored single runs in the first, second and third innings before adding two more in the fourth. St. Joseph placed runners on base in every inning but the third, but it could not push a run across.
“We needed a spark, and the mist we were playing in kept putting the spark out,” St. Joseph Coach Luke Davis said. “I give Spring Hill all the credit. They played a great game. We rely on the other team to give us a lot of walks and make a few errors. They didn’t do it.”
Phillips, the Bears’ leadoff batter, started the game with a single. He drove in a run with a single in the second, and he tripled in another run in the fourth.
“We have had a lot of hits this year, but we’ve never been as clutch as we were today,” Phillips said. “We knew this was going to be a hard game to win. We just came out with everything we had today and hit the ball.”
Junior pitcher Kaleb Blair went five innings to pick up the victory. He allowed 4 hits, struck out 6 and walked 2. Freshman Wesley Featherston pitched two innings of hitless relief, adding four strikeouts.
St. Joseph’s best chance to score came in the sixth when freshman Timmy Coney singled, and senior Dawson Schrekenhofer and freshman Ryan Davis drew walks to load the bases. But Featherston got freshman Caleb Hiegel to ground into a fielder’s choice, then recorded two strikeouts.
“We got the nervousness out of our pitchers last week,” Winfield said. “We managed to keep [St. Joseph] off-balanced today. [Blair] occasionally would miss a pitch, but he’d get back on track.”
Senior Blake Waller, who was 2 for 2 with 2 RBI, drove in Spring Hill’s first run with a first-inning single. He tripled and scored in the third, and he brought home his second run when he was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded in the fourth.
Coney was the only Bulldog to come up with two hits. Senior David Beck and sophomore Staton Holbrook each had a single.
Beck took the loss for St. Joseph, giving up 7 hits and 3 walks while striking out 4.
“Spring Hill played a good, clean game,” Davis said. “Their pitcher kept us off balanced, and they hit the ball really well.”