Panther baseball has resurrected their season.
With a 3-7 record halfway through the regular season, a young Franklin team was left on the outside looking in at the state playoff field. With nine wins in their last 11 games including their final four, the Panthers entered the postseason with a full head of steam.
After a 3-2 comeback win over West Henderson April 11, Franklin embarked on a two-week, four-game road trip. Aside from a 15-8 loss at Asheville April 14, the stretch yielded strong results.
“It was a long two weeks on the road, but very successful,” said head coach Jared Greenwood. “It really did start with that Asheville game. We played them tough, but we needed to save our pitching that game because we had West on Tuesday, so we couldn’t just unload on Asheville. We were up 8-7 at one point, and just ran out of pitching.”
“It was a great day for us hitting – we had a lot of hits, scored a lot of runs, played well on defense – and then we carried that right into West. It wasn’t perfect, but our pitching stepped up. Caden [Mason] threw an unbelievable game over there, and the bats have been here – we’re getting 10, 15 hits a game.”
In a 7-2 win at West, a 10-9 eight-inning win at Hayesville and a 13-7 win at East Henderson, the Panthers racked up 37 total hits including seven from sophomore Will Rauers. On Thursday, May 1, the team returned to Macon Middle School to host East in their regular-season finale.
Franklin came out swinging in the first inning, plating the game’s first two runs off an error, a Rauers double and a Paxton Sutton single. The Panthers doubled their lead in the third with singles from Anderson Terrell, Brock Bradley, Sutton and Gunner McConnell.
The Eagles kickstarted their offense in the middle innings, scoring three runs in the fourth and two in the fifth. In the bottom of the fifth Franklin retook the lead with extra-base hits from Bradley, Hunter Lowe and Isaiah Deas, but East tied the game 6-6 in the top of the sixth.
Franklin’s bats stayed hot in the bottom of the sixth, loading the bases with a Terrell single, a Rauers walk and a hit batsman. With McConnell up to bat the Panthers attempted a daring maneuver, giving Terrell the sign to steal home plate. There the sophomore was initially called out, but after several minutes of deliberation the umpire ruled that East’s pitcher had committed a balk, and awarded Franklin the run. The Panthers protected their lead in the top of the seventh to win 7-6.
With the thrilling win over East, Franklin ended their regular season with a 12-9 record overall and a 5-7 mark in the Mountain Seven Conference, good for fourth place. As the 23rd-ranked team in the 3A West, they were still waiting to learn their first-round playoff opponent as of press time May 5, for a road game to be played the next day.