Stakes high when rivals collide

When Junction City and Woodlawn meet, the stakes are almost always very high, but none will be higher when they meet for the 2A state title this morning in Fayetteville.

With the exception of 2017 and 2018 when they were in separate classifications, the Bears and Dragons have met at least twice in the postseason dating back to 2014.

In 2014 and 2016, they met in all three postseason tournaments with the Dragons winning all three meetings in 2014 as part of their run to the state championship, while the Bears won two of the three games in 2016 that culminated with a 2-0 win over the Dragons in the state finals.

Now three years after they met for the state title before heading to different classes, the Bears and Dragons return to Baum-Walker Stadium again to play for the 2A state championship in their first year back as 2A schools.

“Over the years, anytime Woodlawn and us have gotten together, the stakes are usually pretty high, either for a conference championship, a regional, a berth in the state finals or playing each other in the state finals,” said Junction City coach Joe Paul Hammett. “Coach (Tommy) Richardson does a super job with those guys. They have that tradition like we do. They sleep, eat and breathe baseball and work at it, not that everybody else doesn’t either, but both of us have had enough success that each year those kids that are playing, no matter who they are, they change names and faces, they want to keep it together. I can’t count how many times, but I know four or five times, we either eliminated them in the state tournament or they eliminated us, and every one of them was a one or two-run ballgame that if you won, it was super, if you lost, it was a sickening feeling.”

Woodlawn coach Tommy Richardson agreed.

“The reason it’s that way is because coach Hammett has been at Junction a long time, and I’ve been at Woodlawn a long time,” Richardson said of the similarities between the programs. “We’ve both had a pretty good bit of success. The kids join the program and they know what’s expected of them. The older ones are always going to hand it down to the younger ones. I think Junction City and Woodlawn are a whole lot alike in that respect, not necessarily that we all do things the same, but kids know the tradition is there, and they want to be a part of it. They know they’re going to have to work to be a part of it.”

The Bears are also trying to accomplish a feat that has only been done twice in the history of high school baseball in Arkansas by winning their fourth straight state title, which was done by Pine Bluff (1983-86) and Fayetteville (2006-09), according to the Arkansas Activities Association’s record book.

“That speaks volumes for coach Richardson and his program,” Hammett said. “Everybody that’s a coach and had some success or made it to the state finals, they tell you that it’s hard to get there one year, much less four years in a row.

“It’s really unbelievable because they lost a core of their players last year, but they had a good core coming back. They built around (Sam) West and (Nick) Ward, those two seniors. It’s just a statement to his kids and how hard they work. They’ve definitely earned it. I don’t care if it’s 1A or 5A or 6A, you still have to be pretty good to win the whole thing, and they’ve done it three times in a row.”

Richardson credited his team’s persistence for their run to the state finals.

“I’m proud of these guys. They are a very resilient bunch,” Richardson said. “Early in the year, we hit the ball well and threw it well, but we weren’t catching it. We worked on that, and we made only two errors in the state tournament, so that’s something we improved to turn our season around. That makes me very proud of our guys.

“There’s a lot of teams, a lot of programs that are 15 or 16-8 or 7 or something like that, and they go, ‘Well, we’ll get them next year.’ These guys didn’t say we’ll get them next year, they said, ‘We’ll get them tomorrow.’ That’s the mark of not only that you’re going to be successful on the baseball field, but they’re going to be successful in life, more importantly. They know how to dig in and get the job done and stay persistent.”

Regardless of today’s outcome, current members of the 8-2A will have won the 2A state title for the seventh time since 2011, and Hammett said facing that type of competition has helped both teams.

“Going into the year, on paper, you were looking at Parkers Chapel as the defending 2A state champion, Woodlawn was the defending 1A (champion) and Spring Hill was the runner-up in 2A, so you were talking about three teams to had been to the state finals last year,” Hammett said. “You throw us in there and you throw Harmony Grove in there and Fordyce in there, and you’ve got six pretty good teams in 2A in one conference.

“I think that helped us going into the regional, because especially towards the end when you get to play Woodlawn and Parkers Chapel a couple of times in a two-week period, you’re playing two of the best teams in 2A. That was a plus for us and I think it was a plus for them also. Conference-wise, it’s one of the toughest I’ve seen for 2A. Harmony Grove got beat by Horatio 2-1 in the first regional game, so that tells you what they were capable of. All in all, I think it’s helped all of us, especially us and Woodlawn to get to where we are.”

Although some would call the series between the Dragons and Bears a rivalry, Richardson disagreed.

“I have more of a respect for them than a rivalry, I guess you would say. We all have a respect for Junction City. We have respect for Parkers Chapel. They do things right,” Richardson said. “I can tell you from my side, we know when we play Junction City, we know we’ve got to play baseball. They’re going to be ready. Coach Hammett is going to have them prepared. He does a wonderful job. They’re going to be prepared, they’re going to be sound fundamentally, they’re not going to give you anything. What you get, you’re going to earn. I know we’ve got to be ready to play Junction City.”

If there is one statistic that has held true over the years whenever the Bears and Dragons have met, it’s that the games have been close.

Only three of their meetings dating back to 2014 have been decided by more than three runs, and five games have been decided by a single run, including their last meeting in the regional tournament two weeks ago that Junction City won 1-0 on Jack Smith’s walk-off single, and Hammett is expecting another close game today.

“It’s definitely a challenge this year for us because we’ve beaten them twice, and the last time was 1-0. It was anybody’s ballgame,” Hammett said. “I expect this one to be close. Just who plays the best will come out on top. The streak started with us in 2016, and we’re hoping we play well enough and do the right things to end the streak.”

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