BASEBALL: West Laurens handles business vs. Harlem to clinch region 4-AAA title

Thursday’s region championship celebration went off almost just like West Laurens had rehearsed it. 

Back in February, about a week before the new season began, Raiders head coach Parker Gordon invited his players to step back for a moment as practice ended, and think ahead to envision what that clinching moment might look like, if they were to follow through on a preseason goal of getting back to the top of their league. 

The winning scenario he scripted for this exact game against Harlem was a walk-off sacrifice fly that had Kolby Clark swinging the bat and Cohen Cardwell tagging from third with one out at home in the bottom of the seventh. 

“We’re gonna walk ’em off, and I want us to lose our ever-loving minds,” Gordon said as he recounted his instructions to players during the team’s media day in February. “You’ve got 15 seconds to do that, we’re gonna have fun doing that and you’re gonna picture that. 

“The kids were going nuts, Cohen scored, Gatorade bottles were thrown everywhere, guys were on top of each other. That’s what we want to get to. All that hard work that we get to do will come to a moment like that, and I want us to enjoy those moments when they come.”

The one they were waiting on arrived as hoped out of a slightly different game-ending situation Thursday, with West Laurens leading 2-1 and in the field looking to shut the door on the Bulldogs with one final out. 

And it played out with just as much jubilation after Clark knocked the ball down at first base off a single hop from the bat of Austin Fox, collected it and ran to the bag to end the game, with some of that hysteria already breaking loose behind him. 

The dugout poured onto the field as hats, gloves and water bottles went flying through the air in a whirlwind of hugs, chest-bumps and high-fives between players and coaches. 

“I can’t be prouder of our group of guys,” Gordon said Thursday. “Seeing the boys do it the way they did, I couldn’t even write the script on that.” 

It was all an expression of what this team had put into about a yearlong quest for redemption, after its region title hopes were dashed in an ultra-heartbreaking loss on Harlem’s home field last season. 

After a confident showing behind the six-hit complete game of Clark for the 6-1 win on their return trip Tuesday, the Raiders won just as decisively in Thursday’s lower-scoring finale to clinch their first region championship since 2024 back at home. 

“It’s nothing but about the guys,” said senior Cason Pollock. “We’ve worked nonstop. When we left Harlem last year with that taste in our mouth, we never could forget it.” 

West Laurens (16-5, 12-0 region) denies Harlem its third-straight, after the Bulldogs took 4-AAA last year and their former league on the way to a state title in ’24, and captures a guaranteed spot somewhere in the top eight of the upcoming state playoff bracket. 

But a lot of where the Raiders ultimately fall will shake out in their six remaining regular-season games, two more in the region against Baldwin that will have no bearing on the region race that is now a done deal. 

West Laurens will play two on spring break week, traveling Monday to take on LaGrange and then hosting Washington County on Wednesday back at home. 

In both games, the Raiders seemed to beat Harlem at its own game of small-ball, which has become a calling card for the Bulldogs and their 50th-year head coach Jimmie Lewis.

Tuesday, J.D. Hogan stole a couple of bases, and outran a play that had him hung up between second and third to advance before scoring on two separate wild pitches. 

Another they pushed up to third with some early balls in play (by Grant Baker and Clark to start the seventh) came home on a balk as the Raiders jumped on a couple out of the Harlem bullpen for the last three of their five runs in the two final innings, with RBI doubles by Buck Shepherd and Cason Pollock, and a critical error as Cardwell’s would-be sac fly to right was muffed by a Bulldog outfielder. 

A seventh potential run didn’t come to fruition as they attempted to manufacture a scoring chance with a “cut play” that intentionally got Hogan hung up between first and second as a diversion for J.J. Giles, who was standing at third. 

Harlem didn’t blink over a series of a dozen or more throws in an infield-wide game of catch that started on the right side, and finished up on the left with an out to prevent the run, though Hogan still made it over and in later in the inning. 

“We want to be really aggressive on the basepaths,” Gordon said. “We want to make those guys make plays. I think that’s the way to kind of be aggressive and put some pressure on them, and maybe steal a couple of runs there. I thought the guys executed very well.” 

Thursday, both runs were the product of some well-practiced A-B-Cs. 

The first, ironically, came in the only inning of the six that West Laurens didn’t have a hit as Hogan reached on a bobbled ground ball and Hester was hit by a pitch, and both advanced as a pitch got lost in the dirt.  

Though Grant Baker was denied an RBI by Brody Knight, who pounced on a sharp tapper to third to cut down Hogan at the plate for the first out, Clark got the job done on a similar fielder’s choice that the shortstop Carlisle opted to send to first base, exchanging the run for a second out. 

The difference-making score came in response to Harlem’s only score in the fifth. 

Hogan worked a walk, and moved up on a pitch in the dirt, to allow Hester to place a sacrifice bunt between first and the mound that bordered on the sublime. 

“Nathan had two opportunities last year vs Jefferson in game 3 of the playoffs two get bunts down and move runners over and didn’t execute, but he has worked all summer and has improved, and watching him execute the drill there in big moment is huge,” Gordon said. 

Grant Baker poked one right up the middle a few pitches later for the go-ahead RBI. 

“It was pretty cool how it all played out,” Gordon said. “All those plays are things we work on at practice through drills and situations,” Gordon said. “Watching those guys have success in those moments is huge for them, because they have worked so hard throughout the year to refine those skills at practice and it will bring tons of momentum to us the rest of the year.” 

The Bulldogs, in contrast, were much more hard-pressed to get ’em on, before they could even think about getting ’em over or in. 

West Laurens, besides two walks that were given out in the early part of Thursday’s game, made the Bulldogs hit the ball to reach base. 

Fox was 3-for-3 with a solo home run for half his team’s hit total Tuesday night, then had another two of its five as the only Harlem batter to approach the plate more than three times in either game. 

And he only made it up for a fourth on Thursday after nine-hole hitter Brayden Carlisle was hit by a pitch to keep the Bulldogs’ chances alive with two outs in the seventh. 

He’d be the first man to reach against Duggan Malone, who was back for his first pitching action since a single game at Aquinas in February, and otherwise made it eight-up, eight-down for Harlem after taking over amid a jam in the fifth. 

This was the only inning of the game the Bulldogs had multiple hits, but three of them had the score back even after Layton Sowinski’s leadoff double, and a Carlisle RBI single to equalize at 1-1. Fox followed with a simple base hit to put them on first and second, and starter Brycen Milton was lifted for Malone, fresh off his medical clearance to return from a knee injury that’d kept him on the shelf for over a month. 

And the ending turned out to be poetic for the sophomore, who’d struck out 10 in the game of his life at Harlem to close out last year’s series, but the scoreless game slipped away as the Bulldogs’ Preston Human scored the winning run from third as a nasty curve bounced off the plate and away for a game-ending wild pitch. 

Malone started out Human, his first batter, with back-to-back strikes on the edges of the plate before drawing a groundout that split runners to first and third, and put two away. He’d get ahead of Domenic Titus 1-2 before stranding them with an exclamation point on his swinging third strike to end the inning. 

He wasted little time disposing of the sixth inning side in order, with a flourish on another strikeout of Paxton Jennings for the third out. 

A 2-for-2 Sowinski grounded out to Hester – whose faithful glove and arm were as pivotal as any for West Laurens in the field over the two-game set – and fanned Brantley McGowan to get an out from the celebration. 

“It was pretty clutch,” Hester said. “We’ve been working hard (at our defense) at practice.” 

The freshman Milton shined early on in his third career start, flashing a steep hook that painted a corner for four looking strikeouts out of his seven. 

He pitched around a couple of walks and hits scattered through four scoreless frames before a bit of trouble knocked in the Harlem fifth. 

Milton also picked off his seventh runner of the year with a move that caught Fox on a lean toward second base just after a leadoff single in the second inning. Later, he’d come close to an eighth if not for Jennings, who was able to dodge a tag on his way back to first to escape a rundown. 

“Having Milton pitch with poise as a freshman was huge, and watching Duggan close it out after overcoming adversity with an injury early in the year shows how our guys have bought in to ‘being rooted,'” Gordon said. 

Hester added a double, and Tripp Mascaro, Pollock and Cardwell singles to the Raiders’ five-hit tally. 

Harlem also matched their six in Tuesday’s road trip, though Clark was razor-sharp, striking out six with no walks as he fit seven innings in under 90 pitches – 61 of his 86 being strikes – and left five baserunners on. 

Every inning had a little pressure, except for his 1-2-3 fourth and fifth. But Clark cleared the biggest hurdle in the sixth after Fox took one out on a high drive to left field to lead off, and cut the Raiders’ new lead to 3-1.

After two outs (one a strikeout of Titus), a Knight double brought Harlem’s tying run to the plate. But Clark pulled a string to get Sowinski to swing ahead of a pitch for an inning-ending strikeout. 

Jennings struck out swinging before two ground balls ended the game in the seventh, and gave West Laurens an early upper-hand.  

“At their place especially, winning this game meant a lot, and like that, too,” Clark said. 

Feeding the zone, having disciplined at-bats and making routine plays in the field were all priorities for the season that fit into the week’s gameplan, along with an emphasis on moving runners, and capitalizing with men in scoring position that sent Gordon deep into his roster of extra baserunners. 

“It took all 16 kids on that lineup card to get this win,” he said. “They stayed rooted in themselves, and executed what they needed to do.”  

The want-to on the part of the Raiders was evident in all 14 innings of the series, which they’d circled long before the schedule was even out as a moment in the season they intended to meet at their best. 

“I’ve been taking pictures since June 1 of our workouts, our practices, anything we did during the summer, our team bonding stuff in the fall, all of that,” Gordon said after Tuesday’s game. “I sent 18 pictures to the boys this morning, and I sent them a text that said, June 1 was when you started this journey. You’ve worked harder than any team at West Laurens has to earn the right to come out here and execute, and come out here and compete. I’m so proud of them.”