When Taylor Arnold starts on the mound for the Starkville Academy baseball team, coach Brooks Roberts knows his squad has a little time to assemble an offensive game plan.
That plan fell into place in the final two innings Monday night at Trip Carson Field as Starkville Academy broke a 3-3 tie to beat Heritage Academy 8-5 in a Mississippi Association of Independent Schools (MAIS) Class AAA, District 2 matchup.
Starkville Academy improved to 13-3 and 4-0 in district play thanks in large part to seven hits the final two at-bats and a brilliant start from Arnold.
“In the first inning, you felt like you liked our chances,” Roberts said. “Taylor always pitches well. Sometimes, you just feel like he is in complete control on the mound. If he gives us that, we just eventually find a way to scratch across some runs.”
After getting a ground ball out to start the game, Arnold struck out the next eight in a row.
Heritage Academy (10-5, 0-1) then got off the mat with two game-tying runs in the third inning with two outs. Two wild pitches and a hit batter factored into the offense. An inning later, J.R. Lott doubled and scored on a wild pitch to tie the game at 3.
Sill, one felt like Arnold had the upper hand despite the runs.
“Boy, he was great,” Starkville Academy left fielder/pitcher Nason Heflin said. “When he is pitching like that, we are hard to beat. The pitch count got up there in the third inning, but that was really the only concern. We felt like we were going to push some runs across.”
Heritage Academy starter Blayze Berry made the visitors work hard for everything. He allowed three hits and three runs through five innings before Starkville Academy erupted in the sixth.
“Blayze really pitched well,” Heritage Academy coach Justin Flake said. “That’s the thing about this team. They play hard. They battle and play with a lot of guts. Starkville Academy has a great offensive lineup. We were just trying to hang in there, and Blayze helped us do that.”
After a strikeout, Kyle Faver singled. Another strikeout followed before Arnold drew a two-out walk. The bottom three hitters in the lineup — Heflin, Garrett Lewis, and Sam Clark — followed with hits for a 6-3 lead.
“It doesn’t matter where we are in the lineup, those are just numbers by the names,” Faver said. “Everybody can hit. We can get a rally going from the bottom of the lineup as easily as we can from the top of the lineup. That’s the confidence we have.”
In the seventh, Faver followed with a critical two-run single. Those insurance scores mattered after Carter Putt singled, Berry singled, and K.J. Smith hit a two-run double in the bottom of the seventh.
Those scores came off Heflin, who pitched the final three innings in relief and battled back to get a strikeout to strand two runners.
“It’s so important to win the first game in a series because then you are in control of everything,” Heflin said. “You have the advantage and the other team is fighting uphill the rest of the way just to get back to even.”
Faver, Heflin, and Ben Owens had multiple hits for the Volunteers. The 10-hit attack featured at least one hit from seven players.
Banks Hyde and Lott had multiple hits for Heritage Academy, which had eight hits (four in the final inning).
The teams will conclude their season series with a 4 p.m. varsity doubleheader today in Starkville.
“That’s the best thing about baseball,” Flake said. “(Today) we get to get on a bus, ride to Starkville and hopefully play better. This is a rivalry with two good teams going at it. We need to be a little better in a couple of areas.”
Meanwhile, Starkville Academy hopes to end the day undefeated in the district halfway through a 12-game region schedule.
“At the beginning of the year, coach challenged us to sweep all of our district opponents,” Heflin said. “We took that to heart. So far, so good.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Scott Walters on Twitter @dispatchscott
Scott was sports editor for The Dispatch.
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