A.C. Flora sends head coach Andy Hallett out with eighth basebdall state title
Falcons shut out Airport 4-0 behind Sam McCutcheon to sweep AAAA title series
West Columbia - More than any other season, Andy Hallett wanted to close his 29th as A.C. Flora High School baseball head coach with a championship.
Just two months earlier, Hallett announced his decision to leave the program he built from humble beginnings into a state power. Hallett accepted the positions of athletics director and baseball head coach at Midlands STEM Charter School in Winnsboro.
Motivated to send Hallett out with an eighth state championship, the Falcons fulfilled his wishes. On Friday, they completed a best-of-3 AAAA state championship series sweep of defending champion Airport with a 4-0 victory at Eagle Stadium.
The victory took place less than 18 hours after A.C. Flora pulled out a 2-1 victory in 10 innings at Falcon Field. With the win, the Falcons ended the season with a 17-game winning streak, which included a perfect 8-0 record in the postseason.
“This team right here is going to go down in history as one of the greatest ones to wear an A.C. Flora uniform and have created one of the longest winning streaks of my career,” Hallett said. “In 29 years, I’ve never won this many games (in a row) before, and not only do we do it, but we do it to end the season.”
The series was highlighted by three consecutive days of postponements due to inclement weather. Before Game 1 was finally played on Thursday, there was another 3-hour delay due to thunderstorms.
Once play started, the Falcons’ pitching was the deciding factor. After starter Tyler Hernandez gave up an RBI single to Rylan Bullis in the first inning, A.C. Flora held the Eagles scoreless over the remaining 16 innings of the series.
Hernandez tied the game in the bottom of the fourth with an RBI fielder’s choice. He was replaced on the mound by Riggs Scott, who struck out six in 4 2/3 hitless innings.
Monty Lafitte held Airport scoreless and gave up just two hits over the final two innings. A.C. Flora opened the bottom of the 10th with three consecutive singles, the last by Logan Price resulting in a walk-off RBI.
Game 2 saw Charlie Scott hit a leadoff single for the Falcons, steal second base and score on Roper Wentzky’s single. It proved to be all the Falcons needed as Sam McCutcheon silenced the Airport bats with 10 strikeouts and just four hits allowed in seven innings.
Lafitte and Joe Ray drove in runs in the third inning, and Scott added a solo home run in the sixth inning to close out the scoring.
McCutcheon retired seven of the last eight batters he faced and ended Hallett’s final game with a strikeout.
A year after Airport held an on-mound celebration after winning its first-ever title, it was the Falcons’ turn as it joyously piled on to McCutcheon.
“I was proud of our guys,” Airport head coach Casey Bradwell said. “Proud of our guys. There wasn’t a lack of competing. The moment wasn’t too big. We just got beat by a better team right now.”
After the award ceremony and taking his last ‘Gatorade Shower’ as a Falcon, an emotional Hallett reflected on his career and the friendships he’s made at the school and in the community.
“It’s been a wonderful ride for me,” Hallett said. “(It was) 29 years ago, a man...took a chance on a guy that had never been a head coach. I told him I was going to build a championship-caliber team and a program.
“He said, ‘How you’re going to do that? We’ve never won here before.’ I told him it would be fundamentals and discipline. In four years, we hoisted our first trophy. And the one thing I’m probably the proudest of is we’ve been relevant for 30 years. We’ve won across three decades.
“Our kids have always bought into my system. I think we coach our rosters really well from speed teams to power teams, we do our philosophy based on what’s in our dugout, not what we believe, and I think our kids are really good at responding to that.
“It is a sad day. Twenty-nine years is a long time if you’re 57 years old. But as the road goes, every road comes to an end, and I’m really proud and happy my road has ended at A.C. Flora.”
A.C. Flora finished the season with a 29-5 record, while Airport went 27-8.
