Table Rock wins 1st FAC baseball title in 30 years

Not undefeated No. 1 seed West McDowell.

Not defending champion East Burke in a second Foothills Athletic Conference tournament road game in as many days.

And not four home runs by that East Burke squad in the opening three innings of Tuesday’s title game.

Nothing could stop the Table Rock Middle School baseball team from its spot in the history books.

On the 30th anniversary season of the Falcons’ lone FAC baseball title (which came in a regular-season tie for first place), and on the 30th of April, TRMS’ No. 30, Eli Trantham, started and kept his squad in the game before Puckett Hudson and Hunter Powell provided the late offense and relief pitcher Ryder Huffman silenced the Raiders over the final 3 ⅓ innings of a 20-6 victory in Icard.

No. 4 seed Table Rock (9-5) took a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning before No. 3 East Burke (9-5) seized its only advantage of the afternoon, 3-2, in the bottom of the frame as Maddox Mosteller and Carson Butcher both hit mammoth home runs to left and left-center fields.

With two on and two outs in the top of the second, Hudson, the Falcons’ leadoff-hitting catcher, then connected on his own bomb that carried over the second fence and onto the road adjacent to the field.

It was Hudson’s fifth consecutive game with at least one home run – a span during which TRMS went 4-1 – as the left-handed hitting eighth grader finished with seven homers in 14 games for the season.

“All year, I haven’t seen good fastballs over the plate,” Hudson said. “I was really reading off-speed expecting not to see a good pitch, and I saw a curveball that hung up belt-high and just tried to put a good swing on it, not trying to do too much, and good things happened.”

Colby Lowman drove in Hudson an inning later for a 6-3 edge before Butcher hit his second homer and Blade Carson made it back-to-back homers for EBMS once more to tie the game in the bottom of the third.

Following a scoreless fourth, Hudson’s second three-run shot to center punctuated a seven-run, two-out rally for a 13-6 lead in the fifth. After the Falcons tacked on another run in the sixth, Powell’s seventh-inning grand slam provided much of the damage in a six-run final frame.

“(The second home run) I knew I had to make an adjustment with a new pitcher on for them and that I had a chance to really blow the game open. I got a fastball low and away and just did what I had to do with it,” added Hudson, who finished 3 for 4 with a single, walk, stolen base, and four runs in addition to the two homers and six RBIs.

“I came in my sixth-grade year and – I had played baseball all my life, I quit football for baseball – I really knew that I wanted something for the school because the only plaque on the wall had been co-champions. And I wanted to make it my goal before I leave this place to put my name on that wall.” 

Trantham struck out three in 3 2⁄3 innings before Huffman did not allow a run over the final 3 ⅓ innings, yielding just two hits and three walks while striking out a pair.

“Ryder’s a dawg. That’s what I’ve been looking for from him all year. I gave him the ball and told him I need him to have fun today,” said Falcons head coach Chander Grindstaff. “I know football and basketball are Ryder’s main passions and baseball’s kind of the third sport. But I told him, you know, if you don’t play in high school, this may be your last game. So go have fun, and he did. He executed, he kept stuff down in the zone.”

TRMS was also led at the plate by James Miller (5 for 5, three runs) and Powell (3 for 4, double, three runs, six RBIs). Huffman had two hits, a walk, and three runs, Trantham (double) and Aiken Shade each scored two runs and Luke Webb scored once, and Easton Tollison had two RBIs. 

Mosteller (2 ⅔ IP, ER, 3 K) was the most effective among the four pitchers used by the Raiders. EBMS stranded nine runners, including six in scoring position, compared to three (two in scoring position) by the Falcons.

The contest pitted the same two teams from the 2023 tournament title game, which was also hosted by EBMS.

“It doesn’t get any better than that. We just busted our tails,” Grindstaff added. “We had a really young team this year, more sixth graders than seventh and eighth graders combined, and it was just trying to get them to understand, get on base, have good at-bats, play solid defense, you’ll win games. And that’s what they’ve done the last two games. We had 20-something reach base both days, and in middle school if you can do that, you’re usually not losing games.

“I told the kids last year, you could be the first ones to have a (baseball tournament) plaque hanging on that athletic hallway (at TRMS), and we came up just a couple runs short last year. And this year we didn’t want a repeat and came out the exact same place and finished the job.”

Prior to Tuesday’s win, the Falcons overcame a 5-0 fourth-inning deficit to defeat West McDowell by a 9-5 final in Monday’s semifinal round. In the top of the fourth, Table Rock scored six runs to grab the lead – Hudson hit a grand slam to tie things at 5-all before a solo homer from Trantham put the Falcons in front – while Tollison enjoyed a 4-for-4 day and scored two runs and Hudson pitched the final four innings in relief, striking out eight during his time on the mound.

As for East Burke, it knocked off second-seeded Heritage (9-4) by a 21-1 score on Monday in Valdese, with Butcher registering four hits including two doubles and two RBIs for the Raiders to go with three hits including a triple and four RBIs from Lincoln Burns, two hits including a grand slam and five RBIs from Mosteller, and two doubles from Greyson Roberts.

SOFTBALL

West McDowell 7, Heritage 6

After splitting a pair of regular-season meetings with the second-seeded Lady Spartans, the top-seeded Lady Eagles (11-3) suffered a one-run loss at the hands of West McDowell in the finals of the FAC tournament on Tuesday in Valdese.

Heritage’s defeat came after it shared the conference’s regular-season championship with West McDowell. The Lady Eagles also lost to the Lady Spartans in last spring’s FAC tournament title game.

“This has been a great group,” Heritage head coach Doug Webb said of his team. “We’ve got quite a few eighth graders – seven of my nine starters are eighth graders, my daughter (Reagan Webb) included – and a lot of these eighth graders have played all three sports that Coach Whit (Katherine Whitsett), my assistant, and I have coached, from girls soccer to basketball to softball. … They’re a great group of girls, they’re all friends, they all get along, we haven’t really had any drama issues or anything that we’ve had to work through this year. They just love to go out and play, they love to support each other and be out there with each other, and they have fun while they do it.”

West McDowell took a 2-0 lead in the top of the second inning thanks to a two-out wild pitch that scored Mattox Brown followed by an RBI single from Scarlett Rhodes. However, Heritage countered with three runs in the bottom of the second, when Ansley Compton led off with a single before stealing second and advancing to third on a double from Emmalin Clark, with both runners scoring on a throwing error before another throwing error later in the inning allowed Rylie Hensley to cross the plate with the go-ahead run after she laid down a bunt and reached second on the initial error.

The Lady Spartans retook the lead in the third on an RBI single from Arhianna Cardenas with one out and a bunt single from Hayden Carlson that plated another run with two outs. But Heritage again answered, this time courtesy of a wild pitch that scored Makenzie Powell following her one-out triple in the fifth, to even the score with two innings remaining.

From there, West McDowell got back-to-back two-out RBI singles from Presley Young and Jenna Shuping in the sixth before extending its advantage to 7-4 on another two-out RBI single from Rhodes in the seventh. And while a two-run single from the Lady Eagles’ Maddy Hudson cut the deficit to a single run with two outs in the bottom half of the frame – Hudson ended up moving all the way to third on a throwing error on the same play – she was ultimately left stranded to finish the contest.

“West McDowell’s always good, but for us to have split the conference with them, and I told the girls from the start that our goal was to go out and win the conference because it’s only the third conference championship in softball in school history,” said Doug Webb. “So it’s been like 32 years, we’re only the third team that’s ever won it, and I told them that was the main goal, the tournament was kind of the cherry on top. Of course we would’ve loved to win this, but for them to have … played and scrapped and we only lose by one when we were down three going into the bottom of the last inning, it’s tough to beat a West McDowell team at any time, so for them to fight and scrap the way that they did, I couldn’t be any prouder of them.”

Heritage received two hits apiece from Bailey Winkler, Powell, and Compton on Tuesday, while Hudson, Clark, and Hensley each finished with one hit. Additionally, the Lady Eagles got three hits from Powell – who also struck out nine in a complete-game performance – in Monday’s 6-4 semifinal home victory over fourth-seeded East McDowell, with Winkler tallying two hits and an RBI and Compton finishing with one hit and two RBIs.

On the other side, West McDowell totaled 11 hits as a team during Tuesday’s game, getting two hits each from Young, Carlson, and Rhodes to go with one hit apiece from Shuping, Cardenas, Brown, Jayleigh Greer, and Baylee Effler. The Lady Spartans previously slipped past third-seeded Table Rock (8-5) by a 6-5 final on Monday in Marion thanks to an RBI single from Shuping in the bottom of the sixth that broke a 5-all tie, although the Lady Falcons outhit West McDowell 8-7 and were led by two hits each from Harper Best and Madelyn LeMaster.

Sports editor Paul Schenkel and assistant sports editor Josh McKinney can be reached at 828-445-8595 or paul@thepaper.media and josh@thepaper.media.