AISA AAA CHAMPIONSHIP: Macon East can't match Glenwood firepower in sweep
Brandon McCraine and the Glenwood Gators celebrate their AISA Class AAA title, won on Wednesday at Paterson Field. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
The Alabama Independent School Association Class AAA championship series was a best-of-three series, but it would be decided in the very first inning on Wednesday at Paterson Field.
Macon East Academy got two runners on but couldn’t push across a run. Glenwood School, meanwhile, opened its half of the inning with six consecutive hits, followed by a pair of walks that plated seven runs and the Gators rolled to their 23rd state championship with a sweep of the Knights, 11-1 and 9-3.
“You hope as a coach that you’re going to do that, but you don’t ever know,” said Hall of Fame coach Tim Fanning. “We’ve had those capabilities all year. We had a tough series last week (against Lee-Scott) from a hitting standpoint and I just think they were ready. When you have 12 seniors, there is a lot of leadership in that group. They were ready to go. We had good pitching performances and we made all the plays. That’s championship baseball.”
The Knights sent ace Matthew Kitchens to the mound for the first game, but nothing could hold the Gators’ offense. Glen wood scored another run in the second and three more in the third before the game was halted in the fifth by the 10-run mercy rule.
“There were a couple of ground balls that just made their way through,” Macon East Academy coach Will Graham said. “The next thing you know, we made an error on a bunt and couple of runs scored and it just unraveled from there. It just seemed like we were dying for an out and couldn’t find one. And then we didn’t help ourselves defensively.
“That’s a really good baseball team there. They swing the bats extremely well. So we talked about how when you give up runs, you’ve got to limit them. You can’t up seven in an inning. If you give up three, maybe you can survive but you can’t give up seven.”
Barrett Spaeth’s first-inning single was the only hit allowed by Glen wood ace Jacob Page (12-0) until the Knights scored a run in the fifth on singles by Gunner Justice and Kitchens, followed by walks to Babe Boffo and Spaeth.
The second game was a bit more competitive until the fourth when Glenwood (46-4) used a pair of one-out wake to score three runs on a two-run single by Aaron Burton and an RBI single by Lane Briggs to make it 4-0. The Gators added four more runs in the seventh as eight of the nine starters had at least one hit, including a 3-for-4 performance by Brandon Migraine.
“Man, the way they swing the bats,” Graham said. “We’re sitting here, saying how do we get outs for 14 innings today and keep ourselves in it? It’s tough because they swing the bats extremely well. At the end of the day, we did too. I thought we had really competitive at-bats. When we played in our region series earlier, it was back and forth offensively. We both scored a lot of runs. Today, we couldn’t find the one to fall to get us rolling.”
Page, Wyatt Harper, Burton and Migraine made the all-tournament team from Glenwood, along with Justice, Spaeth and Boffo from Macon East.
It was Fanning ninth state championship at Glenwood, but first since 2017. Wednesday’s title certainly had a special meaning for the veteran coach, who battled stage four colon cancer between the two title runs.
“Those low points, you go to really dark places sometimes,” Fanning said. “You know you’re doing things right, it just doesn’t come, but you’ve also got to know God has a plan for you. I’m just glad His plan involved me being with these boys. Being able to share it with them is pretty dang special.”
For Macon East, losing in the AAA championship game didn’t damper an impressive late-season run after struggling early as defending AA champs in Graham first year as a head coach.
“We heard it from the second we moved up, that Macon East can’t compete in AAA,” Graham said. “That’s what we heard all year and our guys came out here and our final record was 32-11 against an extremely difficult schedule because we knew we were going to play really good teams at the end and we still found a way to win over 30 games.
“It was really easy for me to come in with a group of eight seniors. This team was really player-led, so sometimes you have to remind them they are the leaders of this team but for the most part they made my job extremely easy. I got to sit back and watch them do their thing and it was awesome.”