By Thomas Grant Jr.
State championships for Airport baseball and Gray Collegiate Academy softball are now a victory away.
Both West Columbia-based teams were victorious in their Class 4A final games played Wednesday.
After Game One was rained out Tuesday, the Eagles opened its Best-of-Three series at Seneca. They took an early before holding on for the 4-3 victory.
Pitcher Cash Epps allowed one earned run in five innings. Airport jumped out to a 4-0 lead. Landon Jeffcoat, Braden Gross, and Justin Slightler all had RBI singles and Hunter Epps scored off a wild pitch.
The Bobcats capitalized off two errors to score two runs off Brice Gillette. He was relieved by Hunter Epps who gave up a sacrifice fly charged to Gillette but struck out three in two scoreless innings.
Airport can clinch its first-ever state title in baseball at 7 p.m. Thursday at home. The game will be streamed by the Palmetto State Sports Network on youtube.com/@psssntv.
While the Eagles improved to 7-0 in the post-season, the Lady War Eagles saw their 14-game playoff winning streak end with a 2-1 loss at York in Game One.
It was a continuation of the contest stopped in the Bottom 7th in West Columbia. Gray Collegiate had the tying and winning runs at second and third base with two outs, but Kayla Anderson grounded out to end the game.
Gray Collegiate jumped out on the Lady Cougars in Game Two. Aspen Boulware led off with her school-record 21st home run of the season.
The Lady War Eagles added RBI singles from Maliah Wright and Elizabeth Robinson and Makenzie Sease scored on an error. It was more than enough with sophomore Peyton Hendrix on the mound striking out eight and allowing just three hits in the 4-0 victory.
“Obviously, I feel like it lit a real fire underneath us,” Hendrix said. “When we lose, we come back stronger. It just really gets us in that confidence and it gives us in that mode in order to win. So I feel like we were more hyped than we were the first time that we lost.”
“Peyton’s a Bulldog,” Gray Collegiate head coach Doug Frye said. “She did this last year and we’ve just got good pitching. We played good defense too.”
The deciding game is set for 6 p.m. Friday at Gray Collegiate Academy.
