Back to basics approach ends with state title for Berkeley baseball
By David Shelton
Senior Writer
Moncks Corner – Languishing around the .500 mark for the first half of the 2025 season was not something that Berkeley High baseball was accustomed to.
Competing, and winning, has been Berkeley’s method for the last decade so to be just average midway through the season was unusual.
Right around spring break, coach Landy Cox had a “come to Jesus” meeting with his team. He admitted he had relaxed the atmosphere and expectations of the players a bit but that was going to change.
“Around spring break, I decided that we had become complacent. I told the kids that we were going back to what this program has been built on. We were going to change the way we doing things, from practice, to how we talked to each other, to how we prepared the field. Just everything that we needed to take pride in the program.”
The message was well-received by his team and things turned around. The Stags won their last 11 games, which included a two-game sweep of Catawba Ridge in the AAAAA Division II state championship series. For the second time since 2022, the Stags were state champions.
Berkeley won game one, 2-1, in 10 innings and swept the series with a 9-4 win, on the road to cap a 22-10 season.
“This is absolutely unbelievable,” Cox said. “We were loaded in 2022. This is just a bunch of scrappy, hard-nosed kids, a bunch of dogs, a bunch of grinders. These are just a bunch of blue-collar kids. That’s all it is. It’s about the team.”
Though junior Hudson Clark, a third-year starter, is the team’s most legitimate college prospect, many of Berkeley’s key players are simply good high school players. Good players who play with confidence can win.
“I’ve never seen a group just totally flip in terms of their confidence. It just grows every day,”
Cox said. “We’ve had so many different guys step up in the playoffs. We’ve had
guys hitting less than .200 hit homeruns. We’ve made great plays defensively, and we have
battled on the mound. It’s not our most talented group but they are scrappy.”
Clark finished as the team’s leading hitter this season, posting a .361 batting average with 20 RBIs and 32 runs scored.
Senior outfielder Devon Hogue, who transferred in from nearby Cane Bay for his final season, finished at .320 with 24 RBIs. He was hit by pitch 17 times.
Clark and Hogue were the only full-timers to hit over .300, a testament to other players and their ability to contribute in a variety of ways.
Gavin Gaskins was the ace of the pitching staff, going 9-2 with two saves and a 1.14 earned run average.
“Incredibly consistent the last two years. He was such a battler and refused to lose,” Cox said.
Junior Keller Wofford, the winning pitcher in game two, won six games with a 3.87 earned run average. Hunter Morris went 5-1 with a 2.97 earned run average while pitching both as a starter and reliever.
Softball wins region; advances to Lower State finals
The Berkeley softball team continued its dominance in region play and nearly made the state finals this season. Berkeley lost in the Lower State finals to St. James, finishing with a 26-5 record.
Among the key players this season was senior Reese Watson, who batted .381 with eight doubles, 19 stolen bases and 27 runs scored. As the No.1 pitcher, Watson had a 0.45 earned run average with 151 strikeouts in 78 innings.
Senior shortstop Rileigh Ballentine hit .395 with 25 RBI, 31 runs, three homers and 15 stolen bases. Payton Gamble hit .392 with 28 RBI and nine doubles while sophomore Mackenzie Herzog hit .384 with 23 RBIs, nine doubles and two homers. Herzog also hurled 59 innings inside the circle, posting a 1.06 earned run average with 84 strikeouts.
