By Robert Wilson
Third-year Pisgah baseball coach Sam Starnes is chasing history. And with six more victories, the Bay Minette, Ala., native and Puckett High and William Carey University graduate will reach it.
Starnes and his Dragon baseball team need to win three best-of-three MHSAA Class 2A series and are six wins away for the first baseball state title in school history.
Pisgah – which has a 21-8 record and has won 16 of its last 18 games – plays host to Lake Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Game 1 of the best of three series in the 2A state quarterfinals at Pisgah in Sandhill in Rankin County. Game 2 is scheduled for Friday at 7 p.m. at Lake. Game 3, if necessary, is scheduled for Saturday at 7 p.m. at Pisgah.
“We have been to North State once in 2021 and South State once in 2022, but before 2021 Pisgah had never been past the second round,” Starnes said. “Our kids have done a tremendous job of getting hot at the right time for the playoffs the last two years and this year looks like the same so far from the offensive standpoint with 11, 10 and 12 hits in the three games against Mize (in the second round series last week).”
Pisgah started the season with three starters out due to injuries after graduating five starters from last year.
“We got off to a slow start with a 5-6 record, but once we hit spring break and were almost fully healthy the team caught stride and went on a nine-game winning streak,” Starnes said. “The biggest concern going into the season was the youth of the starting pitching. We lost our top three arms from last year and only have one senior whose logged innings this season (nine innings). Our pitching staff is very young and had a slow start, but (freshman) Ryder White, (junior) Lane Lewis and (sophomore) Paxton Prisock have figured things out with more reps and have helped booster the team through the last six weeks. The offense has been the strength of the season.”
Pisgah has a .341 team batting average and a .497 team on base percentage and are averaging 10 runs per game. Senior outfielder and Arkansas State University Mid-South signee Colton Coleman leads the team with a .433 batting average, followed by senior and Southwest Mississippi Community College signee Gavin Bledsoe with .427, junior catcher Aiden Swales .402, freshman centerfielder Ryder White .368, senior John Maxwell .339, and sophomore third baseman Ian Holliday .312. Bledsoe leads the team with 11 doubles and two triples. Swales has a team-high five home runs. Coleman and Bledsoe lead the team with 45 runs scored. Swales has a team-high 48 runs batted in.
“The offense started rolling once John Maxwell got hot in the nine hole, reaching base in front of our team leaders on offense (Coleman, Bledsoe and Swales),” Starnes said. “The top five in our order carry our team offensively for the most part (White and Holliday hit fourth and fifth in the order) when Colton and Gavin are on base on our team tends to score a lot of runs.”
White, Lewis and Prisock are the top pitchers. White has nine wins, Lewis six and Prisock three. White leads the team with a 3.26 earned run average and 55 strikeouts.
“Those are the top three guys we’ll lean on in the playoffs, accompanied by (junior) Mason Huddleston who just returned from surgery two weeks ago and Ian (Holliday),” Starnes said.
Starnes went to Baldwin County High in Bay Minette before moving to Rankin County and going to Puckett his senior year, graduating in 2012. He had Tommy John surgery as a senior and starting student coaching as Oak Grove while he went to William Carey. Starnes decided after his rehab, not to pursue baseball anymore and go into coaching. He was an assistant at Oak Grove two seasons (2014-15), Forrest County AHS two seasons (2016-17), Morton one season (2018) and Pisgah two seasons (2019-20) before taking over as head coach at Pisgah for the 2021 season.
After finishing first in Class 2A, Region 6 play, Pisgah defeated West Lincoln two straight games in the first round of the state playoffs before outlasting Mize in three games in the second round. Bledsoe had three hits and three runs batted in. Prisock started and White got the win in relief. Now comes Lake, a team that Pisgah defeated in three games last year in the quarterfinals before losing to Stringer in two games in the semifinals.
“We are looking forward to our matchup with Lake this week,” Starnes said. “It will be a good week of baseball with a lot of intensity from both teams. We met last year in the third round and went to a third round that last nine innings. We expect Lake to come ready to play. Coach Hampton has done an amazing job with his team this year and we expect them to show up ready to compete. I’d say that Pisgah and Lake became a good, friendly rivalry after last year’s series, so both teams are ready to see each other again.”
