AHSAA BASEBALL: Ponder, Pike Road ready to take next step for fledgling program

Coach Allen Ponder and the Pike Road Patriots will attempt to earn the school’s first state championship beginning with Monday’s Game 1 of the AHSAA Class 5A championship series against Russellville. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

In the past seven years, Russellville has been to the playoffs six times (there were no playoffs in 2020) and reached the state championship series five times.

“Look at their history, look at their tradition,” Pike Road coach Allen Ponder said. “They’ve been there so many times. Then look at us. We’re in the fourth or fifth year of existence. We’re making history with every step we take.”

Seven years ago, Pike Road’s baseball program was just a dream. Skipper Jones came out of retirement to manage the team in its first year as a varsity program in 2019 and the Patriots played without a field.

Bouncing around from church backstops and country pastures -- and even a few practice sessions on the football field -- left a group of players eager to learn and hungry to improve. Now, armed with a new coach and a state-of-the-art baseball facility, the Patriots have reached the Class 5A championship series.

Pike Road will play Russellville on Monday at Paterson Field at 4 p.m. The second game in the best-of-three series will be played at Riverwalk Stadium on Tuesday at 10 a.m. A third game, if necessary, will immediately follow the second game at approximately noon.

But it’s not as simple as a new coach and new facility. Pike Road won its first 10 games and looked like a team that could contend for a championship, then lost five of six games in a stretch a couple of weeks later with lopsided losses to Holtville and Elmore County. 

“We went on a nice little losing streak at spring break and I think we had to do some self-reflection, look in the mirror,” Ponder said. “We were going to go in one of two directions. We were going to get that thing figured out and have a chance to be pretty good or we weren’t going to figure it out and we weren’t going to be good. Our kids understood that and got to work. Each week we continued to get better and better and better.”

The hitting wasn’t consistent and the fielding was good most of the time, but if there was one constant with the Patriots, it was a solid pitching staff that kept the team headed in the right direction.

“If you were to go look at our stats, our pitching is the one thing that has been consistent all year long,” Ponder said. “We’ve pitched the baseball well. Our pitching with Clay Slagle and Lucas Bagget and Chael Kerr and a couple of other guys have done an outstanding job all year long. If you look at what’s carried us all year long, it’s been our pitching staff.”

A midseason slump was replaced by a late-season surge as the Patriots won the final six regular-season games and eight of 10 playoff games. Even when Pike Road dropped a game at UMS-Wright in the series opener in the second round and at St. Paul’s Episcopal in the second game of the semifinal series, the Patriots kept the championship dream alive by winning the third game. 

“You try to instill a belief in these kids that they can win in any circumstance, in any environment,” Ponder said. “Winning two Game Threes at UMS-Wright and St. Paul’s does wonders in those areas. Playing Game Three at UMS-Wright definitely had us prepared to play Game Three at St. Paul’s, but any time you’re able to go in a hostile environment and play two very good teams and play in two Game Threes and win both of them, I definitely think that does a lot for your mentality as you go into another series that could potentially go three games.”

Pike Road, as Ponder pointed out, is making history. In its two years as a varsity program playing Class 3A baseball, the Patriots never had a winning record. Regardless of what happens over the next two days, Ponder is the obvious choice for state coach of the year honors in turning a losing program into a championship contender in one year.

His former team, Pike Liberal Arts, swept the championship series with Bessemer Academy to win its third consecutive state title, an event Ponder missed because his new team was playing St. Paul’s.

“I would have loved to have gone over and watched those guys play,” he said. “They’re a very deserving, very hard-working group of kids. Great coaching staff. Their success is a direct result of all the hard work the kids and parents put in.”

Now, Ponder will have the chance to return to Paterson Field (site of Pike Liberal’s 2018 title) and Riverwalk Stadium (site of Pike Liberal’s 2019 championship) with a new team, giving the state an opportunity to see Pike Road baseball.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” Ponder said. “We’ve had some great support here at Pike Road, but the goal is never ‘we want to win a state championship,’ it’s ‘we want to get to Riverwalk.’ We expect an unbelievable environment and it’s an opportunity to showcase our talent and showcase how far we’ve come as a baseball program.”