By T. Scott Boatright
Simsboro High School will enter the Louisiana High School Athletic Association baseball playoffs with a little winning momentum after defeating Arcadia 11-1 in six innings Monday at the SHS Baseball Field.
Tigers head coach Scott Hiers hopes that win is enough to earn his team a home game to open the Division V Nonselect School playoffs, which the LHSAA will release brackets for today.
“Hopefully it was enough,” Hiers said. “We were 16th in the power ratings heading into the game, but I don’t know how many, if any, other schools scheduled late games against bigger schools trying to change up the ratings in their favor. So hopefully we did enough to get us a home game to start the playoffs.”
Against Arcadia, Simsboro started strong and finished strong, with the Tigers showing some patience at the plate as Kendrick Craig was hit by a pitch in the bottom of the sixth with the bases loaded, plating pinch runner Payton Cross who had entered the game to run for Braylin Gibson, who reachedfirst base on a walk.
That run walked the Tigers off the field based on the 10-run rule with one out. The Tigers had loaded the bases off of a Chris Stevens single followed by walks by Gibson, Caleb Coldiron and Max Lee.
Arcadia plated its lone run in the top of the first inning before Simsboro pushed across two runs of its own in the bottom half of the opening stanza, taking advantage of four walks, a pair of stolen bases and a pair of wild pitches by the Hornets that gave up one run each.
Simsboro added three runs in the bottom of the second inning after Noah Thomas singled and Hayden Rabo followed with his second walk and third stolen base of the young contest before Chris Harrell’s triple plated them both.
Harrell himself scored on an RBI-groundout hit by Hunter Stevens that put the Tigers up 5-2 heading into the top of the third inning.
Craig’s RBI-single in the bottom half of the third pushed Simsboro’s advantage to 6-2 before Harell doubled in the fourth and scored on a Mark Hollaway RBI-groundout that put the Tigers on top 7-2.
Harrell added two more RBIs for the Tigers in the bottom of the fifth with his second triple that plated both Craig, who had reached base after being hit by a pitch, and Rabo, who had reached first base on a single.
Arcadia put two runners on first in the top of the sixth, but Rabo struck out a pair of Hornets to get out of that jam.
Despite earning the win, Hiers felt it was still somewhat of a lackluster effort from his Tigers, making him maybe even more appreciative of still winning in strong fashion.
“It’s good to get the win, but in all honesty I thought we played really lethargic today,” Hiers said. “Hopefully we got that out of our system and will play with more intensity in the playoffs, because we’ll have to do it then.”
Hiers said he did see some bright sports, including Rabo’s 11-strikeout performance on the mound to earn the win while also going 1-for-2 at the plate with three stolen bases, three runs scored and one RBI.
Another bright spot for the Tigers was Harell, who batted 3-for-3 with four RBIs off his double and two triples.
“We need Rabo pitching like that, so that was good to see,” Hiers said. “He was throwing strikes and looked good the whole game. Chris swung the ball really well. He really put the bat on the ball and drove it real well, and that was good to see.
“But I would have really liked to have looked sharper. We left a number of runs on bases that we could have scored but made some bad baserunning mistakes and things like that.”
Now Hiers and his Tigers (18-10 on the season) wait to see how today’s brackets shake out.
“I had some bigger schools call wanting to pick up a game today against us, but we had this game scheduled against Arcadia all the way and I wasn’t going to back out of it,” Hiers said. “We make the schedule at the beginning of the year and are going to stick to it. We weren’t going to try and get out of the game against Arcadia to pick up more points.
“So where we end up is where we end up and we’ll play a solid baseball game and see what happens.”
