After a strong regular season and deep playoff push, Caledonia’s baseball season came to a close over the weekend in back-to-back losses to Pontotoc in the Class 5A North Half Championship.
The Warriors (22-13-1) took command of the best-of-three series with a 4-2 win on Friday and rallied from a 4-0 deficit in the final two innings to hand the Cavaliers (21-12) a season-ending, 5-4 loss. With two outs and the bases loaded, the Cavs issued a walk to tie the game in the seventh inning and then Pontotoc stole home for the walk-off win.
“Tough way to go out,” head coach Chase Reeves said. “The little things, man. I’ve said it all year, ‘How you handle adversity, whoever does that the best is going to win games.’”
In both games the Cavs found themselves with their backs against the wall at some point and couldn’t come up with an answer. In the first contest, The Warriors got to Cavs’ ace Reid Garrett behind a single, a sacrifice bunt and a hit-by-pitch to pull ahead 3-0 in the second inning while the Cavs’ offense struggled to get on base against Pontotoc pitcher Miller Finn. He struck out Caledonia 10 times and only gave up five hits and two earned runs.
“Their guy was good on the mound and we had some opportunities to keep their runs off the board with simple stuff (like) covering first base – just simple things,” Reeves said. “We did not play at a high enough level, is what I would say.”
Adversity hit again in Game 2, but this time it was after Caledonia pulled ahead 4-0 after the fifth inning. The Warriors scored three runs in the sixth and stole the win with two more runs in the seventh.
“We were up 4-0 and had a chance to add some runs and just didn’t get it done,” Reeves said. “At the end of the day (the Warriors) are a good baseball team. They’re tough, they’re gritty and they don’t quit, and we didn’t either. We competed, we traded blows and unfortunately at the end of the day we came up on the short end of it.”
It’s not how Reeves wanted this year to end, but he said he is proud of how far his Cavs have come along in just his first year at the helm.
“Year one for me was all about establishing a culture and a standard of what it means to play baseball here and how we do things,” he said. “Obviously you want to win and the goal was always to be the last team standing, but at the end of the day for me in year one was getting a culture established and have the senior group leave a foundation better than they found it and get something to build on in the future – and they did that.”
The Cavs head to an offseason where they’ll lose 11 seniors, including three who are college-bound, along with six of their regular starting lineup from this year.
“We do lose a lot and it’s hard to replace those guys but they left their mark saying, ‘Hey, we bought in,’” he said. “That’s what we challenged the senior group with from Day 1, ‘You’d be the first group that leaves their legacy and make everybody want to follow the way in which you do things in the future,’ and I was proud of them for doing that.”
Pontotoc advanced to the Class 5A state championship game and will play either South Jones or Sumrall.
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