3A CHAMPS: Trinity battles back to win state championship over Piedmont

The Trinity Wildcats won twice on Tuesday to clinch the Class 3A state championship over Piedmont. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

JACKSONVILLE -- Piedmont handed Trinity a 4-2 setback in the opening game of the best-of-three championship series at Jacksonville State University’s Rudy Abbott Field on Monday night, but the Wildcats didn’t seem fazed at their do-or-die fate facing them on Tuesday morning.

“Back at the hotel, we were all talking and we said it was kind of funny how this is exactly where we wanted to be,” Trinity senior Coleman Stanley said. “Obviously, we would have liked to have won game one but at the end of the day that is the third time it has happened to us, so it was nothing new. We had tons of confidence in Fleming (Hall on the mound in game two) and then I came in at the very end and got it done. But (being down in the series) didn’t really mean much to us.”

Hall and the Wildcats found their groove in the opening game Tuesday with a 6-5 win, then watched Stanley put on a masterful performance in the second game for a 3-1 victory that gave Trinity the Class 3A state championship, their seventh at the school and first under first-year coach Jarrod Cook.

“It’s surreal,” Cook said. “But all the credit goes to the kids.”

A Trinity team that struggled to hold a hot-hitting Bulldog squad at bay in the Tuesday opener turned to Stanley for the decisive game in the best-of-three series and watched as the senior kept Piedmont from mounting any serious threat. 

Jack Hayes singled to left center field in the first inning and the next batter, Noah Reedy, was hit by a pitch, but the senior right hander settled down and retired 19 of the final 24 batters he faced after Reedy. One reached base on a come-backer to the mound that Stanley had trouble grabbing and was charged with an error. 

Another, Austin Estes, lofted a shot to center field that Mac McClinton lost in the sun and had to track down after it bounced off the turf. Estes ended up on third, credited with a triple, and scored on Max Hanson’s groundout to trim the Trinity lead to 2-1 in the fifth inning.

Another was a Sloan Smith grounder that bounced off of Stanley’s glove, deflected toward third as Smith was credited with a single in the seventh. The next two batters were retired on groundouts, ending the game and touching off a celebration by the Trinity players. 

“I think the advantage Coleman probably had was he got to sit over there for game one and game two and watch,” Cook said. “See what we were doing. That team can really swing it. They barrel balls up and they hit mistakes. That’s what good hitting teams do. But when we executed in advantage counts for us, that was the difference.”

When Stanley was asked whether it was his best performance of the season, he hesitated. 

“I can answer that,” Cook interjected quickly. “Yes.”

In the first game Tuesday, the Wildcats did their damage with the bats in the first three innings, then held on for dear life. Ben Easterling’s RBI double was followed by a run-scoring single by David Michael Lieux in the first inning for a 2-0 lead.

Piedmont scored an unearned run after a dropped popup in the second inning, but Trinity responded with four runs in the third on two-run singles by Lieux and Brady Rascoll. The Bulldogs scored a run in the fourth and three more in the fifth to trim the lead to 6-5 before Trinity catcher Grayson Ashe took the mound and secured his third save in the playoffs by pitching the final 1.2 innings to force the decisive third game. 

Then it was up to Stanley, who saved his best game for the final game of his high school career.

“We like to throw it off the plate,” Ashe said. “First of all, we got ahead in the count a majority of the time. His curveball was looking the best it has looked in a while. And once we got to that point and we were throwing off the plate, he was hitting his spots left and right and getting ground balls.”

The media considered a pair of Trinity players in trying to select the most valuable player of the three-game series, but finally settled on a third option, a pitcher who faced 28 batters and surrendered just one clean hit while walking none and striking out five.

Coleman Stanley chased an elusive state championship for three years as a contributor on the football field and baseball diamond, just as his father David did in 1992-94. David Stanley, despite all his accomplishments on the baseball field, never won a state championship. 

“No he didn’t,” Coleman Stanley said. “He kind of relied on me to get one. So now I can go ‘Big Dog’ and celebrate.”