Sports

Thirty-eight runs later, Eagles head to second round

• By scores or 17-0 and 20-1, the Terrell Academy baseball team demolishes its first-round state opponent Oak Mountain, advancing to next week’s quarterfinals.

Derek Barichello

DAWSON - Terrell Academy baseball coach Dwayne Suggs had to put an end to it.

His top-seeded Eagles held a 21-0 lead in the top of the third inning of Game 2, after drubbing an Oak Mountain team made up of mostly eighth graders, 17-1, in Game 1 hours earlier to open the GISA Class A State Playoffs on Friday afternoon.

It even got so out of hand that Suggs ordered Eagles runner Chris Dean to intentionally get into a run down as Dean allowed the Warriors catcher to tag him, even after dropping the ball once.

"That's the first time I ever did that," said Suggs, who is in his third year as a head coach, first at Terrell Academy. "I'm just not going to do that (run up the score) on a team. We had enough."

Eagles' lefty Chandler Farley held the Warriors scoreless in the bottom of the third and completed the sweep with both games called in the third inning.

When it was over, the Eagles recorded an amazing 38 runs, 23 hits, 24 free passes via walk or hit by pitch, reached base on five errors and batted around the order six times (twice in the first inning of Game 1) in just five innings of offense.

Third baseman Amp Landrum had the biggest day from the plate. In six plate appearances, Landrum registered a grand slam, a double, two singles, a walk and seven runs batted in.

"There's just not a lot you can say about a game like that," said Farley, who picked up the win on the mound in Game 2 and scored four runs. "It starts getting boring."

Given the fact that offensive onslaught was gift wrapped against a 1-11 Oak Mountain team with a lack of pitching, six eighth graders, two sophomores and two juniors - Suggs is concerned about a potential loss of intensity as the Eagles advance to the second round and will play the winner of Curtis Baptist and Robert Toombs starting next Friday in Dawson.

"We're going to jump right into practice and forget this even happened," Suggs said. "I don't think in any way that helped us. We did our job and now we're focused on the next round."

In order to avoid these lopsided games in the future, Suggs offered some suggestions.

"Maybe they should expand the regions to six or seven teams to make each team have to qualify," Suggs said. "Gosh, they only played four actual high school kids."

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