In the early hours of Sunday morning, South Arkansas Community College’s first season on the baseball diamond came to an end.
The Stars saw their season end at the hands of Arkansas-Rich Mountain, the NJCAA Region 2 champion during the regular season.
Although their season ended with that loss, the game was a microcosm of the Stars’ resolve, which showed itself time after time.
The Stars found themselves trailing 10-1 after two innings of play, but they fought back and scored the game’s next seven runs to make it 10-8.
After the game was delayed by rain for two hours, the Stars entered their final at-bat trailing 14-9.
The Stars, who were the No. 8 seed and didn’t know if they would even be in the postseason until the last conference games of the season were played the Sunday prior to the start of the tournament, scored four runs in the ninth before coming up one run short.
The Stars showed that resolve in eliminating National Park, who had won three of four games to close the regular season.
Zach Murphy, who threw a two-hit shutout against the Stars the week prior, recorded only one out in a 14-4 loss.
Kade Lively picked up his third win of the year after allowing three hits and two runs in six innings of work.
The Stars kept their momentum by eliminating Carl Albert State behind a Gabe Spedale home run coupled with Tex Cook and Trey Miller collaborating on an eight-hitter with 12 strikeouts between them in an 11-3 win.
But their run would end at the hands of the Bucks, who gave the Stars both of their losses at the Plains District Tournament after winning their first encounter in walk-off fashion.
For SouthArk coach Cannon Lester, the experience of getting the chance to play in the postseason was invaluable.
“I think it was a big deal for us getting to go, and I’m glad we got in and got to experience it,” Lester said. “All the games were close there for a little while. We really played tough. That’s what I told them that anything could happen. Western (Oklahoma State) was the two seed. They were the runner-up and played in the national championship game last year and they go 0-2. It’s one of those tournaments where anything can happen.
“I thought we competed really well and we did all year long. I thought we were pretty resilient all year long. We might come out and get smoked, and the next game we might smoke them. I think too that was a little inexperience on our part, especially on the pitching side.
“We’re going to really get going there, but it was just resiliency all year from our guys to keep coming back, keep showing up and keep responding. That will serve us well next year, that’s for sure.”
Lester said he was pleased with how his team fared in their postseason debut.
“I thought we competed well in the tournament,” Lester said. “We lost a tough one on the first night on a walk-off home run. I thought we played pretty good. We hit some balls early that were caught. A guy made a good swing on it late. We came back the next day against National Park and the guy that was an All-Region pitcher and had thrown our only shutout we suffered all year, we got him out within the first six batters on Friday. We played well. It was the same thing the next day against Carl Albert. Kade had a good start on the mound. They started an All-Region guy on the mound, and we got him out of there. We saw it really good against them. In the Rich Mountain game, we were down 10-2, came back and made it 10-8, then we had about a two-hour rain delay. We didn’t finish until about 1:40 in the morning.
“We lost a tough one, but we never stopped fighting. I think it was good for our guys. It was good for them to see it. They had fun and we competed well. I think it gave us a little momentum for next year.”
The Stars finished the season with a record of 24-32-1, but given that the Stars played only 18 of their 57 games in El Dorado and with Lester having to build the team from scratch after he was hired a year ago, SouthArk’s first season was a successful one.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that it was a success,” Lester said. “With us getting hired in May and then having find a team real quick. Our guys were tough and we got lucky with some guys in finding them.
“After we lost, I went down the line of this guy is here because of this, and this guy because of this and this guy because I know this guy. It was just crazy to see how the team came together and how it formed. Honestly, the amount of talent that we have on the team, really I think it surprised me. If you line up our position players for the most part, we would line up against about anybody.
“If you line up our pitchers as far as stuff-wise, we’re going to line up with about anybody. We’ve just got to get a little better execution in there, and I think that will come with time, but overall, it was a success.”
Lester said none of the Stars received any postseason accolades with former Parkers Chapel standout Trace Shoup narrowly missing making the All-Region Second Team with Fox Locke and Roc Hawthorne just missing on Gold Gloves.
Shoup finished the year as the Stars’ leader in batting average, home runs, RBIs, hits, doubles, triples and slugging percentage. He was also second in stolen bases with 10.
Overall, Shoup hit .338 with nine home runs and 61 RBIs.
Fox Locke, one of four Stars who will heading off to play at a four-year school this fall, hit .323 with six home runs and 55 RBIs. Clay Burrows and Ryan Riggs also hit over .300 for the year, and Hawthorne finished just behind Shoup with eight home runs.
On the mound, the Stars will lose Kyle Williams, who is slated to attend Central Arkansas, and Tex Cook, who will be joining Locke at Arkansas Tech.
However, the Stars are expected to have the rest of the staff return with Aaron Warriner leading the Stars in appearances with Josh Uchtmann, Hunter Royal, Miller and Lively among the leaders in innings pitched.
“We had some guys that had some good years,” Lester said. “We probably didn’t have that one guy that dominated all year, but we had a lot of guys that I thought stayed tough. We went through stretches on the pitching side and hitting side where it was going really well, but I’ll be honest, there probably wasn’t a stretch there where we did both. We probably didn’t hit and pitch at the same time all year long, so it’s one of those things where I think next year we’ll be able to handle the adversity a little better, handle the struggles.
“We only had two guys that ever played a full college season, and everybody else had never done it. For the most part, when you’re in high school, you don’t struggle a whole lot.
“The players that are at this level, they were pretty much the best players on their team in high school. They didn’t struggle a whole lot, so we struggled some this year, and they learned to get through those struggles and I think they’ll be ready to go next year.”