Williamsburg takes hard road to SCISA AAA baseball state championship series
Stallions go 16-13 while pushing Pee Dee to limit for second straight season
Florence – Tyler Boyd has established an outstanding baseball program at Williamsburg Academy. The Stallions made their third consecutive appearance in a state championship series this year after winning the AA state championship in 2021 and finishing as runners-up in 2022.
This time around, Williamsburg was playing for the AAA state championship, but was still going against the same old nemesis: Pee Dee Academy.
Both schools moved up a classification after SCISA added AAAA for this school year. The Stallions and the Golden Eagles just brought their rivalry with them.
Yet Boyd said this run to the state championship series was different than the two previous seasons. That was so because Williamsburg wasn’t the usual dominant force it had been the two previous seasons.
“It was great to make this run to get here again,” Boyd said following Williamsburg’s 5-3 loss to Pee Dee in the deciding game of the best-of-3 series played on May 21 at The King’s Academy field. “It was a little different this year than it was the last couple of years because we barely finished over .500.”
The Stallions finished with a 16-13 overall record in a season full of tight games after being pretty dominant in the two previous runs to the championship series.
“We had a tough schedule, but our kids battled,” Boyd said. “Almost every game was a close one, win or lose. That’s why in pressure situations like this I trust in my guys because they've been in it all year. It's just a testimony to what they've been through throughout the year.”
And not only did Williamsburg have to deal with Pee Dee in the state playoffs, it once again had to do battle with them in Region 2-AAA. Throw in the mix a strong Florence Christian School team and you had a 3-way tie for first with 6-2 records with each of the schools sweeping one another.
“It starts with the region,” Boyd said of the Pee Dee-Williamsburg rivalry. “It’s like we’ve been in the same region forever, it’s usually one or the other. If we want to win it all, we've got to beat Pee Dee. It's a heck of a rivalry.”
The Stallions had a balanced offensive attack this season. They were led by catcher/pitcher Landon Strong, centerfielder Bradley Muldrow, pitcher/first baseman Greyson Moore and pitcher/infielder Holdon Baylor.
Strong was strong at the plate, behind the plate and on the mound. He had a .284 batting average with an on-base percentage of .385 and an on-base/slugging percentage of .763. He had four doubles, a home run and 20 runs batted in.
Behind the plate, Strong didn’t commit an error in 175 chances and threw out 16 base runners for a caught stealing percentage of 34.8. He worked 24 innings on the mound with a 3.50 earned run average. He had a 3-2 win-loss record and two saves with 25 strikeouts and just four walks.
Muldrow led the team with a .370 batting average to go with an OBP of .468 and an OPS of .881. He had four doubles and 10 RBI.
Moore batted .274 with three doubles and 14 RBI. He had 54 innings pitched with a 2.33 earned run average and 3-2 win-loss record,
Baylor batted just .160, but did have nine RBI. He did serious damage on the mound, going 6-4 with a 2.83 ERA in 54 1/3 innings.
Bryce Blackburn worked 30 2/3 innings with 2.05 ERA and two wins, and Layton Morris had a 1.68 ERA, two wins and a save in 16 2/3 innings.
Morris had a nice season at the plate with a .307 average to go with team highs in OBP at .481, an OPS of 1.067, six doubles, five home runs and 29 RBI. Second baseman Wes Smith batted. 298 with an OBP of .377 and an OPS of .707, shortstop Ryan Corey had just a .200 average but an OBP of .381 and rightfielder Will McCutchen had just a .143 average but an OBP of .408.
Blake Hedrick had nine RBI, while Blackburn had eight and Corey had seven.
After splitting the first two games with shutouts, Pee Dee winning the opener 2-0 and Williamsburg the second game 8-0, it came down to a crooked number in the deciding game. The Eagles got the bigger one, scoring five runs in the fourth inning while getting just two balls out of the infield.
Boyd had the sequence of events engrained in his mind that ended up with the Golden Eagles plating five unearned runs against Baylor, the starting pitcher, to open a 5-1 advantage.
“When Holdon pitches we usually play pretty good defense because he throws strikes,” Boyd said. “You know he's going to throw strikes and our guys are usually ready because they’re going to put it in play. He did a heck of a job. It's five unearned runs. He can't do much better.”
Strong came on and pitched two scoreless innings. The Stallions pulled within two on a 2-run double by Morris in the fifth, but they could get no closer.
When asked if he would do anything differently if given the opportunity, Boyd responded in the negatory.
“Nah,” he said. “If I look back tonight and in the morning I'll probably think of several things. We came into the game as ready as we thought we could be, but in a state championship game everything gets more magnified. If you give them anything they're going to get capitalize.”
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