Williamsburg win away from advancing to baseball state championship series for 4th straight year

   Kingstree -- The Williamsburg Academy baseball team is a victory away from playing in a SCISA baseball state championship series for the fourth consecutive year.

           The Stallions will play host to Hilton Head Christian Academy on Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the championship round of their 5-team, double-elimination bracket of the AAA state playoffs. As the last undefeated team, WA will advance to the best-of-3 state championship series next week with a victory. Should HHCA win, the teams will play a deciding game on Thursday.

           Williamsburg is the No,. 2 seed behind Hilton Head Christian. It is 19-5 on the season and finished second to Pee Dee Academy in Region 2 with a 4-2 record. The Stallions became the last undefeated team after traveling to Bluffton on Friday, May 3, and beating the Eagles 5-1.

           Williamsburg, which beat No.3 seed Northside Christian Academy 6-0 in its opening game, gets HHCA after it again after it defeated Florence Christian School 8-5 on Tuesday.

           Williamsburg lost to Pee Dee in the AAA state championship series last year and the AA title series in 2022. The Stallions beat the Golden Eagles for the AA crown in 2021. They lost to them 8-0 and 7-5 in the two regular-season contests this year.

           Williamsburg was hitting .297 as a team entering the state playoffs. Senior first baseman Blake Hedrick was leading in hitting with a .390 average to go with 17 runs batted in. Junior rightfielder/third baseman Layton Morris was right behind Hedrick with a .387 average. He also led in home runs with four, runs batted in with 23 and runs scored with 29 to go with seven doubles.

           Junior third baseman Bryce Blackburn was batting .364 with a team high eight doubles while sharing the hits lead with Morris with 24. He also had two homers and 16 RBI.

           Senior shortstop Conrad Balder was hitting .357 with 21 runs, senior second baseman Wes Smith was batting .297 with 16 RBI, junior leftfielder Wyatt Floyd was batting .273 with a homer, and senior catcher Landon Strong was batting .255.

           Williamsburg had stolen 68 bases as a team with Hedrick leading the way with 14 while Smith had 10.

           Senior Greyson Moore and Blackburn had been the workhorses on the mound. Moore had worked a team high 34 1/3 innings and had a 4-2 win-loss record to go with a 3.06 earned run average and 52 strikeouts. Blackburn was 7-1 with a 1.66 ERA in 33 2/3 innings with 48 strikeouts.

           Strong has been the closer, picking up three saves in six appearances covering 11 1/3 innings. Morris had a 2-1 record with a save and a 0.35 ERA in 20 innings, while Balder was also 2-1 with a save and a 3.36 ERA in 16 2/3 innings. Smith was 1-0 with a save and a 3.50 ERA in eight innings. 

WILDES PLEASED WITH DEVELOPMENT OF SOFTBALL TEAM

After losing five seniors from a team that played for the SCISA AA softball state championship in 2022 and was one of the final four teams playing in the 2023 AAA state tournament, Williamsburg Academy head coach Pat Wildes anticipated there could be some growing pains this year.

And there have been. All things considered though, Wildes is more than pleased with the season the Stallions have had.

      “I'm playing with a bunch of eighth-graders,” said Wildes, whose team owned an 11-11 record with two games left in the regular season before the start of the state tournament on May 10-11 in Sumter. “I graduated five seniors last year, so we're rebuilding even though we’re graduating five seniors this year.

      “Coming into this year being as young as we were going to be, I thought it was going to be a rebuilding season, but hey, we're the conference (Region 2) runners-up this year. They've exceeded my expectations, in the talent level and just becoming overall ball players. We started off slow, but we've grown the whole time.”

           Wildes admits that the main reason Williamsburg has exceeded expectations is the performance of eighth-grade pitcher Abby Ward.

           “Abby's only a 13-year-old eighth-grader,” Wildes said. “She moved up from JV (junior varsity) last year, and she's carried the whole load. She's the only pitcher that we've got. 

“She's a hard worker. She lives behind me, so I know them really well. She plays a lot of travel ball, she has a pitching coach, she practices all the time. She and her dad get out there and they continue to work.”

In a 2-0 loss to AAAA powerhouse Laurence Manning Academy on April 26, Ward had a tremendous game in the circle. She allowed just two hits and struck out seven batters while both of the runs were unearned. That gave her 218 strikeouts on the season, a school record. That’s quite an accomplishment considering the person she passed for the record is her successor, Nealy Lamb, who is currently playing for NCAA Division I Charleston Southern.

There are three seniors in the starting lineup in centerfielder Jana McConell, shortstop Carmela Jacobs and catcher Allie McFadden. Two other eighth-graders join Ward in the lineup in second baseman Riley McCrea and third baseman Maggie Jones. Junior Audrey Wadford bats leadoff and plays left field, junior Brayleigh Matthews bats cleanup and plays first base, and freshman Kathryn Holliday starts in right field.

In the loss to Laurence Manning, Williamsburg had six hits, but none of them came in the same inning. Ward was 2-for-3 with a double and a triple. McCrea had two hits, while Jacobs and freshman Perry Wise, who started in left in place of the absent Wadford, each had a hit.

Ward, McCrea, Jacobs and Matthews have each hit home runs this season.

The other members of the team are senior Anna Louise McKenzie and senior Danielle Alston.

        Williamsburg finished 3-3 in region play. The Stallions lost twice to defending AAA state champion Pee Dee, the team to which they lost the AA state championship series. They split their games with Carolina Academy and swept their games against Florence Christian.

           It’s now a wait-and-see proposition on how the brackets fall when it comes to the state tournament. However, Wildes believes his team is up to doing battle.

           “We can play with anybody when they play,” Wildes said following the loss to Laurence Manning. “We played really well tonight. That's a AAAA school with a lot of talent.”