Tigers drop close one to Longhorns
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark.—Will Wilson had played this game a hundred times growing up in Viola as a young boy.
Sure, the stage was a little bigger, but the stakes were just the same as his made-up baseball games in his yard. State championship on the line, Wilson always delivered. Sometimes it was his imaginary pitching, sometimes he won with his bat.
On Monday, it was both. Wilson pitched 5.1 innings of one-hit ball, struck out five and did not allow a run. He also drove in the winning run in the seventh inning as the Longhorns rallied past Taylor 6-5 in the Class 1A state baseball championship at BaumWalker Stadium.
“I’ve dreamed about this my whole life,” Wilson said. “I’m just excited to be a Longhorn to do this for all the people in Viola.”
The title was Viola’s first since winning back-to-back titles in 1998 and 1999 with Brandon Love leading the way. Love, who was drafted in the third round by the Cincinnati Reds, played a role in this title, coming in to pitch batting practice this week to the Viola team.
The Longhorns (26-7) trailed 5-0 in the second inning when Wilson came on in relief of starter Dalton Roork, another lefty, with two outs. Wilson, who has signed with Alabama A&M, got Viola out of the inning and dominated the rest of the way.
Viola coach Clayton Gardner, who was an eighth-grader when the Longhorns won the title in 1999, said his team never flinched when it got down early.
“We pride ourselves on winning one pitch at a time,” Gardner said. “We believe as long as there is a pitch to be thrown, we have life. We are resilient. We faced a lot of adversity this year and I think that helped us when we go to this point. We told them to keep chipping, keep making routine plays and win it at the end, and that’s exactly what we did.”
Taylor (21-8) took advantage of Viola’s struggles with control to score two runs in the first and three more in the second including an RBI single by Daegan Covington.
Viola sliced the deficit to 5-2 in the fourth when Gage Harris singled and stole second. A pair of walks loaded the bases and Kevin Foster singled to right to drive in Harris. Viola added another run on a passed ball.
The Longhorns tacked on three runs in the sixth. Carson Guffey reached on a one-out walk and a pair of two-out walks loaded the bases for Roork, who doubled just inside the third-base bag on an 0-2 pitch, clearing the bases and tying the game at 5-5.
In the seventh, the Longhorns again got runners on via walks and Wilson punched a single to left, scoring Andrew Cantway from second for a 6-5 lead.
“I was just trying to find a gap,” Wilson said. “He’d thrown me all off-speed pitches the first time, so I was looking for something I could poke through.”
The one-run lead was enough for Wilson, the game’s Most Valuable Player, as he struck out the last two batters, setting off a celebration.
“For Will to come in and do what he did against a team the caliber of Taylor says a lot about him and a lot about our guys making plays behind him,” Gardner said. “I think we made every routine play behind him and I think that was a total team effort.”