What’s next for Draughn baseball after conference four-peat?

The Draughn baseball team dominated the Western Highlands 1A/2A Conference each of the past four years, winning four consecutive league titles and posting a combined record of 76-23 that included a 44-4 mark in WHC play.

The Wildcats also advanced to the second round of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association 1A state playoffs in 2022 before reaching the fourth round in 2023 and the third round in both 2024 and 2025.

Nonetheless, things are expected to get significantly more difficult for Draughn this spring after graduating four players in 2025 who greatly contributed to the program’s success in recent seasons.

The aforementioned group was headlined by Tate Jensen, who is currently on the baseball team at Appalachian State University after being named 2023 1A state player of the year as well as a two-time WHC pitcher of the year, a two-time WHC player of the year, and The Paper’s Burke County player of the year in both 2024 and 2025. As a senior, Jensen led the county in batting average (.476), doubles (eight), triples (four), RBIs (32), and pitching wins (seven) and strikeouts (113), and he also stole 14 bases to tie for first among county players.

Also gone are 2025 all-conference and all-county selection Jacob Mull, who led the county in home runs (seven) and runs scored (25), and Griffin Stephens, who was named WHC pitcher of the year and was also on the all-county squad last spring after posting a 6-1 record and a 1.54 ERA with 84 strikeouts in 54 2/3 innings. Mull now plays football at Gardner-Webb University, while Stephens is on the baseball roster at Young Harris College in Georgia.

Marshall Brinkley was the fourth senior last year for the Wildcats, who are now members of the Western Piedmont 3A/4A Conference, an eight-team league that also consists of defending 2A state champion East Rutherford along with R-S Central, Chase, Hibriten, West Caldwell, East Burke, and Patton.

“The new conference is gonna be tough,” Draughn third-year head coach Kenny Stephens said. “... But athletically I think we’re there. We’re young, it’s gonna take us a little bit of time to get to where we need to be, but I think we can get there. So, I can see us surprising a lot of people. Our goal every year is to play for a conference championship, but we know that it’s a big hill to climb this year.”

But before the Wildcats start their conference slate with a road game against R-S Central on March 10, they still have tough nonconference contests to play at South Caldwell (March 3), versus Burns (March 4), and at Freedom (March 6) next week after beginning the season with a home game against Mountain Heritage late Friday.

Facing such stingy competition is by design, as Stephens likes to get his players ready for the rigors of playoff baseball from the outset. Last year, for example, Draughn lost four straight nonconference games and five of six to start the season before winning 14 of its final 18 contests.

“That’s what I tell people, when we have a parent meeting I tell them, ‘Guys, don’t quit on our season for the first two weeks,’” said Stephens. “Because we’re gonna get knocked around a lot. … Our first couple weeks are just a gauntlet, and we do that in the nonconference to prepare us, because you don’t win a state playoff game in the first week.

“When we do that, I feel that we are battle-tested and ready because we’ve seen everybody from the 7A down, and we can compete with anybody in the playoffs. So that’s the way I kind of set that up is I want them to feel like when we get to playoff time, ‘Hey, this ain’t that bad.’”

Jensen and Mull combined for 10 of Draughn’s 11 homers in 2025, with the remaining long ball coming from one of the two seniors on this year’s roster, Tyler Lange. (David Burnette is the Wildcats’ other 12th grader.)

Speaking of Lange, he is one of five pitchers Stephens feels “can go out and give us a chance to win,” with juniors Chase Yambor, Nolan Ballard, and Caden Barker and sophomore Liam Dalmas also likely to see time on the mound.

“As long as they can throw strikes,” said Stephens, “we’ve got a chance.”

Furthermore, when it comes to the offense, Stephens believes that Draughn will rely heavily on “small ball.”

“We’re gonna make things happen, hit-and-run, a lot of bunting, a lot of moving, stealing, things like that,” he added. “Because we just don’t really have the guys that can hit it like those guys (Mull and Jensen) could the last couple years, so that’s our big thing this year. In high school baseball, you kind of change your whole philosophy year to year.”

According to Stephens, Barker “swings it well” and “puts it in play,” as does Yambor. That duo combined for 27 hits, 13 RBIs, and 36 runs scored in 2025.

Additionally, Ballard and Lange “are two guys that are gonna hit it pretty hard.” Ballard batted .262 with 17 hits, 12 RBIs, and seven runs scored last year, while Lange totaled nine hits, five RBIs, and 14 runs scored.

“We’ve got to kind of start back at ground zero with guys learning to go where they’re supposed to go,” said Stephens. “... When you’ve got young guys, one of the things I tell them is that the game’s faster. Where in middle school you had like six, seven seconds to throw the guy out from home to first, now we’re at 4.5 seconds, so it’s a big jump.”

The question is, how quickly can Draughn’s youthful roster make that jump? To Stephens, contending for a top spot in the conference comes down to “belief.”

“I think we need to believe we can,” he stated. “You hear about teams like East Rutherford and South Caldwell and Burns, teams that are competing for a state championship every year. And the reason I schedule them is I want our guys to realize where we need to be to compete. So, the biggest thing is we need these kids to believe that we can compete against teams like that and not go in feeling kind of defeated before we get there.

“... I think if we get these young guys to buy in, it gives us a chance. So that’s our biggest takeaway from this year is to see how far we come.”