Hilton Head Prep beats Orangeburg Prep 5-3 to claim SCISA AAA baseball state title

           St. George – Hilton Head Prep took a 5-3 lead into the bottom of the seventh inning against Orangeburg Prep in a game in the SCISA AAA baseball state championship series.

           Wait …..

           “Didn’t it look a lot like the other night,” questioned HHP head coach Chris Wells.

           As in Game 2 of the championship series on Thursday at Indian Field in Orangeburg The Dolphins led 5-3 going into the bottom of the seventh, three outs away from winning a state title. That didn’t turn out very well as the Indians scored three runs to win 6-5.

           And that’s why OP and HHP were playing Game 3 on Monday at the Dorchester Academy field. Hilton Head Prep flipped the script.

           Orangeburg Prep got the tying run on base, but Hilton Head Prep didn’t let it slip away this time behind the pitching of Brandon Espinoza to win 5-3 and give the program its first ever state championship.

           Senior catcher Jackson Stanyard said there were a few choice words bandied about in the Dolphins dugout prior to taking the field in the seventh. However, it all really came down to this.

           “Let’s go out there and let’s play our game,” Stanyard said. “A lot of us got caught in the moment (in Game 2). We were about to win a state championship and we lost our minds. We said we need to go play our game, make the fundamental plays, throw strikes and get outs. And that’s what we did.”

           The right-handed Espinoza took the mound in the seventh just shy of 90 pitches with a pitch limit of 105. He walked Hunter Judy to start the inning before getting Landon Kuck to hit into a fielder’s choice. Morrison Burroughs, who had the walk-off base hit in Game 2, drew a walk.

           That brought Eli Pantaleon, who homered earlier in the game, to the plate. Espinoza and Pantaleon battled before Pantaleon hit a sinking line drive that second baseman Calvin Middleton snagged on a diving catch for the second out.

           Espinoza struck out Orangeburg Prep leadoff hitter Mason Tyler with his 101^st pitch to secure the win.

           “This is really kind of surreal,” said Espinoza, a sophomore in his first year at HHP after transferring from May River High School. “I knew we had the team to do it. My team is very, very talented. I knew they had my back. I just had to pitch my game and do my stuff and we’d be fine.”

                       Hilton Head Prep finished the year with a 29-3 record, while the Indians finished with a 26-5 record. Each of the games in the best-of-3 series was highly competitive with the Dolphins winning the opener 3-0 on Wednesday in Hilton Head Island.

           That developed a lot of mutual respect between the two teams.

           “Hats off to the Hilton Head Prep team and Coach Chris Wells,” said OP head coach Tate Jameson. “He’s got a heck of a ball club.”

           “We made the plays this time against a hell pf a ball club and a hell of a coach,” said Wells, who just completed his seventh season in charge of the Dolphins. “I told Coach Jameson after the game that I wish they were AAAA or AA in another division and would have won the state championship. I would have rather beat anybody else than Coach Jameson. He’s a class act.

“If this was a 7-game series we would have played seven.”

           Espinoza was making his first start of the season after serving mostly as a short reliever. In going the distance, he allowed four hits while walking two and striking out five. Only one of the three runs was earned.

           Wells said the circumstances of the series led him to go with Espinoza.

           “He’s a little bit of a wildcard,” the head coach said. “He hasn’t pitched much for us. You look at his stats. He’s at the bottom of our roster in innings pitched. We’ve used him in other situations. We haven’t had three tough games in a week. He was fresh and I knew he was probably our second best pitcher all year, and we never used him.

           “It was a roll of the dice, and my coaching staff will tell you I’m a gambler, and we gambled and won. Hie’s probably our MVP tonight.”

           Wells said there was a lot of discussion during the last couple of innings as to how long to stick with Espinoza. The coaching staff went to Stanyard for his opinion.

           “This was our first year with him, he’s a sophomore, but he looks like he’s a vet,” Stanyard said. “It was amazing. I can’t even tell you what I was thinking. He just fought all night long. He had a tight (strike) zone, and he just worked with it. He never gave up, always kept his head up.”

           Burroughs, one of eight seniors on the Orangeburg Prep roster, started on the mound. The left-hander got off to a slow start but was helped out by a fortuitous play.

           Sammy Middleton led off the game with a single before Stanyard drew a walk. Espinoza came through with a single to score Middleton and put the Dolphins up 1-0.

Burroughs threw a wild pitch that hit the brick wall backstop and bounced right back to Judy, the catcher. Courtesy runner Sam Bocian, In for Espinoza, ran straight to second while Stanyard backtracked to the bag. However, Stanyard got tagged out. Burroughs then struck out Connor Campbell and got JP Pirkey to ground out to get out of the inning.

           HHP missed out on a big scoring opportunity in the second. Tyler Britschke led off with a single and reached second when he beat the throw on a sacrifice bunt by Brody Hausher. Britschke did get forced at third, but an infield single by Calvin Middleton loaded the bases with one out.

           Burroughs responded by getting both Sammy Middleton and Stanyard to pop out on the infield.
 

           Espinoza allowed just one hit batter in the first two innings before the Indians got to him in the third. Eli Pantaleon picked up a 1-out single and Tyler reached on a throwing error that left runners on second and third. Tadd Jameson picked up a run batted in with a groundout and Charlie McCutchen delivered an RBI single to make it 2-1.

 OP expanded the lead to 3-1 in the fifth with Pantaleon’s solo homer in the fifth. Hilton Head Prep responded with four runs in the sixth. It came against Pantaleon, who came on in relief of Burroughs with one out in the third and had retired seven of the eight batters he faced with the one reaching on an error before being eliminated by a double play.

           Pirkey drew a leadoff walk before Pantaleon struck out Britschke. Hausher singled before Rooney and Calvin Middleton drew walks to force in a run and make it 3-2.

           Bryson Williams came on in relief of Pantaleon to face Sammy Middleton. Middleton hit a high chopper to Kuck at third base. Kuck initially looked home but then went to first and threw the ball away. Two runs scored. An RBI single by Stanyard made it 5-3.

           The Dolphins finished with six hits coming from six players. Sammy Middleton had a hit, a run and an RBI as did Calvin Middleton. Hausher had a hit and a run, Stanyard had a hit and an RBI, and Britschke and Campbell both had hits.

           Pantaleon had two of OP’s four hits, scoring twice and driving in a run. Tilden “T” Riley and McCutchen had the other hits. McCutchen and Jameson both drove in a run and Tyler scored the other run.

           Orangeburg Prep last won a state title in baseball in 1991 and had not played for a state championship since 2003. Coach Jameson had nothing but praise for his eight seniors – McCutchen, Tadd Jameson, Pantaleon, Kyle Cooper, Burroughs, Tyler, Judy and Williams. The head coach said McCutchen, his son, Pantaleon, Cooper and Burroughs along with Riley, a junior, were major cogs in the rebuild, starting with the program in the sixth grade.

“They are the core group that has built Orangeburg Prep baseball back along with the coaches,” he said. “We’ve made the playoffs the last four years, and it’s been a long time since that happened.

“They got good pitching and were just a little bit better than us. We had a chance to win the game in the seventh, and you can’t ask for much more than that.”

           For Wells, winning the state title is a culmination of a lot of hard work from his players.

“I was in tears about 10 minutes ago,” Wells said. “It means the world (winning state). You ask these kids to sign up and commit and give it all they’ve got, to look back with no regrets, and they bought in. Early in the season, the seniors – the best group of seniors I ever had, and I don’t say that lightly because I’ve had some outstanding young men over my career – they took it upon themselves to draw up the mantra together, and we did this together.

“We don’t have elite (NCAA Division I) DI talent top to bottom, we’re just a gritty bunch of guys from Hilton Head and the Lowcountry who fought tooth and nail and eared it. It means the world to this group. Those pictures we just took they’ll look back on those for the next hundred years and it will be something very special to them. It feels good to me personally, but I can’t get over the joy I have for these young men right now.”

“I can’t even put into words,” Stanyard said of what it means to be a state champion. “We’ve worked so hard for this, day in and day out. We’ve been playing baseball since we go to school, playing every single day. I can’t explain to you how much work we put in and how much this has been due for us. I’m just so excited.”