It was a night of elimination games in Lexington County with one game involving two county teams Monday, May 16. Two teams avoided elimination and moved on to the finals of their bracket, one step away from  competing for their division championship, while one saw it's season come to a heartbreaking end.

Over the weekend, another local team put itself on the brink of competing for a state championship.

Brookland-Cayce

The Brookland-Cayce Bearcats fought off a furious late comeback from Beaufort to avoid elimination in the 3A Upper State playoffs. They came in to the game following their weekend 4-3 loss to Hanahan.

The Bearcats were opportunistic early. Recent College of Charleston signee Hayden Thomas hit a line drive single in his first at bat to move Parker Mergo to second base. Two wild pitches moved Mergo home and Thomas to third. B-C couldn’t move Thomas past home and left the inning with a 1-0 lead. 

Thomas stayed red-hot at the plate as his two-run home run to center field gave the Bearcats a 3-0 lead and a little bit of breathing room. 

More Beaufort wild pitches resulted in more Bearcat runs in the bottom of the fourth. This time, a wild pitch scored BJ Etheridge to give them a 4-0 lead. In the same inning, Tanner Staton scored on an error after he initially reached base on an error. Beaufort’s mishaps and Brookland-Cayce’s opportunistic play opened up a 5-0 game going into the fifth inning.

However, Beaufort slowly crept back into the game. The team scored one run in the fifth inning and stranded two runners and tacked on three in the top of the sixth before Etheridge’s big strikeout ended the inning and minimized the damage.

The Bearcats went out in order in the sixth ending and sent Beaufort to handle its final three outs. Beaufort got on base by way of error with one out to put the game-tying run on first. However, a flyout and a strikeout ended the game and helped Brookland-Cayce fend off a late push. 

Bearcat Head Coach Rusty Charpia knew that the momentum shifted over the course of the final few innings but was glad to see his team hold on for the win.

“We had a ground ball get through here at third and that was a little scary, they helped us a little bit by popping one or two of them up and the last guy struck out,” Charpia said. “Baseball is strange. I tell the guys all the time that it’s so much easier coaching football because you can control the narrative. If I’m leading in the fourth quarter, I just run the clock out. But you can’t run the clock out in baseball. You still got to throw it in there to them.”

One of the big storylines of the night was starting eighth grade pitcher Ryan Bullis, who tossed five complete innings, struck out three, walked none and gave up no earned runs to earn the win in the team’s biggest game of the season. The decision to start Bullis was a strategic move to take pressure off of him according to Charpia.

“We didn’t want our young guy to have to throw in the last inning of a one-run game. We thought it would be better to start him and see how long he can go and possibly bring in the guy who has been there a lot of times to finish it off with the possibility of still being able to throw Wednesday.”

Bullis’ background as the middle school quarterback and a flattering local comparison also gave Charpia some confidence that he could handle such a big assignment with the season on the line. 

“He’s the middle school quarterback and he’s the starting point guard on the basketball team. I think he’s gonna be that type of player. I hate to put this type of pressure on him, but if you talk to a lot of the old timers around here, he kind of reminds him of Russell Triplett, who played here and went on to play shortstop at Clemson. They said when he was in the eighth grade he was very similar and was also a quarterback. So you know, we just feel like through the JV games and a few varsity games that he has played, he was right for the moment and he competed. I was very proud of him.”

The Bearcats move on to get another crack at Hanahan, an opponent that Brookland-Cayce is very familiar with, including their weekend loss that put them in the Monday game. Despite the familiarity and history between the schools meeting up in big games, it doesn’t provide Charpia with any solace or feeling that either team has an edge.

“That actually even makes it scarier. Because with how many different times we’ve played each other, and they’re always really close and with how we’ve split wins, I’m confident that we’re gonna play hard but I’m not confident in the outcome. I don’t think their coach is either. I think he has the same worries I do.” 

The series moves to Hanahan for a winner-take-all final game on Wednesday, May 17.

Gray Collegiate Academy-Pelion

The nightcap was an intercounty match-up with a season on the line in the 2A Upper State bracket between the Gray Collegiate Academy War Eagles and the Pelion Panthers. 

The Panthers threatened to score early when Noah Pegues led the game off with a double. Gray managed to get out of the inning and take a lead in the bottom half of the first when Kendrick Wright hit a hard ground ball single to left to score Blaine Redmond, who reached base via walk. Later in the inning, Landon Turner scored on a passed ball and gave Gray a 2-0 lead going into the second inning.

The teams exchanged scoreless frames in the second inning but Pelion got into the scoring in the top of the third. Carlos Rivera reached base on a pop-fly single and was moved over to third by way of a Jaiden Myers line drive double to right field. One wild pitch later, Rivera scored to cut the War Eagle lead in half.

Things got tense in the fifth inning. In the top of the inning, the Panthers managed to tie things up after Myers drove home Tyler Bessinger with an RBI single, giving the Panthers a feeling of a momentum shift. 

Gray responded in the bottom half of the inning by chipping away with a small ball strategy that it has embraced all season. After Garrett Blankenship hit a double to lead off the inning, it was time for Gray to bunt away. Richmond laid down a bunt and made it safely to first, moving Blankenship to third. Wright also laid down a bunt that the Panthers couldn’t handle to score Blankenship while also allowing Wright to take first. Brent Stukes followed those up with a bunt of his own to reach first and load the bases. 

“That’s what we do and everybody knows that,” Gray coach Charlie Assey said after the game. “We’re not a very good hitting team, but once we start bunting, we become a good hitting team. We have a rule that, if someone can lay a bunt down and they don’t throw us out, we’re gonna score two times in the inning.”

Then, controversy struck. After a line drive by Turner resulted in a fielding error, Wright was sent home rounding third and was in a race to the plate. The throw to Pelion catcher Blake Pelinski was in time, but as Pelinski attempted to tag Wright, Wright ran through the tag and resulted in a collision and caused Pelinski to drop the ball. Wright was ruled safe and Gray was awarded a run to make the score 4-2. 

“They told us they didn’t have to slide,” Pelion coach Barry Fogle recalled of his conversation with the umpire crew after the play. 

Gray continued their small ball game plan when Zeb Taylor bunted, forcing Pegues to throw home but the throw was slightly late and Stukes scored on a close play at home. Pelion got out of the inning but the damage was done as Gray took a 5-2 lead into the sixth inning.

Pelion failed to score in the sixth and tempers began to flare. While on second base, Brady Szumilas got caught in a run down and ran over Austin Lloyd at third base, causing a shouting match between Szumilas and Redmond to engage in a confrontation and had to be separated by their coaches. The Pelion dugout cleared and a few players left the Gray dugout before cooler heads prevailed and the players were separated.  

The emotional fireworks didn’t stop Gray from piling on in the bottom half of the inning. A Redmond triple scored Blankenship and a Wright single brought Redmond back around to score. Wright scored another run after he was driven home by a Stukes ground ball that allowed him to reach base via error. 

In the seventh, a William Eshaak walk with the bases loaded proved to be the last of the scoring as Gray advanced to the Upper State final for a rematch with Mid-Carolina starting Wednesday on the road. Gray will need to beat Mid-Carolina twice to advance, with each game being an elimination game for the War Eagles.

“We’re just glad to have the opportunity,” Assey said. “Do we want it to be reversed where we got to just win one here instead of having to go there and win twice? Yeah. But you know, that’s how we got that second chance. We took care of business tonight. Now all we can do is go over there, show up and do the best we can do.”

For Pelion, a historic season comes to an end in the Upper State, the furthest the program has gone in over a decade. Fogle also thinks that the success of this season can carry over to next year. 

“We had a good season. Our home grown kids gave it all they had. Home grown country boys that gave it all they had,” Fogle said after addressing a teary eyed group of seniors that played their final game in a Panther uniform. “Two years, 35 wins, last year they lost in the district finals and this year we punched through. We have a huge junior class so we think we can be better next year.

5A

River Bluff

The River Bluff Gators are playing their best baseball at the right time, winning their last seven games (including 11 of their last 13) en route to a Lower State bracket championship appearance and sitting one game away from playing in a 5A state championship series.

The Gators started their Lower Bracket play on the road at Wando, and brought the big bats and opportunistic play with them. In the third inning, they broke the scoreless tie when Myles Proffitt scored on a wild pitch and Beau Hollins crushed a two-run home r to left field (his second of the playoffs) to take a 3-0 lead into the fourth inning. 

Wando managed to score a run in the fourth inning but River Bluff kept hitting the ball and manufactured more runs to put the game out of reach in the fifth inning. Hollins’ RBI single scored Mattie Garris, a wild pitch scored Walker Mitchell, a passed ball scored Hollins and Hodges McCathern scored on an RBI single by Wyatt McPherson.

In the top of the seventh, a Garris fielder’s choice scored Coleman Szuhy and a Mitchell sacrifice fly brought home Logan Busbee to give the Gators a pair of insurance runs and a 9-2 lead in the bottom of the seventh. Andrew Vaughan closed the game out on the mound and moved the Gators into the winners bracket game. Thomas Powell earned the win after almost five innings of work and four strikeouts.

Saturday, they came back home to face Summerville and wasted no time getting on the scoreboard. With Hollins hitting his third home run of the playoffs and second homer in consecutive games, the Gators ended the first inning with a 3-0 lead. 

River Bluff put up another three-run frame in the fourth when a bases-loaded Hollins walk brought in Proffitt and a Powell single scored Mitchell and Colby Reynolds. 

Summerville was able to put up one run in the sixth, but that was all they were able to do against Garris, who tossed five and two-thirds innings with seven strikeouts. Vaughan closed the door with the final out of the sixth inning and in the entire seventh.

With the two wins, the Gators avoided having to play in an elimination game Monday night and will play the loser of Summerville and Berkeley at home in the Lower State finals on Wednesday.

Lexington

After a successful season and playoff run, the Wildcats’ season came to an end over the weekend after a pair of tough losses.

On May 11, Lexington was forced to take on T.L. Hanna on the road and lost by way of a walk-off single. The Wildcats did all they could to tie the game at two runs apiece in the top of the sixth inning following a Brandon Cromer RBI single that scored Tyler Floyd and Gabe Herold. 

Reese Marcum pitched a great game for Lexington, striking out ten batters and surrendering only two runs (all in the first inning) before getting relieved in the sixth.

On Saturday, Lexington faced elimination at Boiling Springs. Boiling Springs scored one run each in the first and third innings but that’s all they would need as Lexington’s bats went cold, engineering only three hits throughout the game and falling by a 2-0 score. 

The Wildcats’ season ends with a 28-7 record and a Region IV-5A title.