NHSI: Winder-Barrow Comes Through Late

CARY, N.C.—After having its seemingly comfortable lead against Rocky Mountain (Colo.) HS erased late, it would have been easy for Winder-Barrow (Ga.) HS to get down. Instead, it swung the momentum back in its favor as quickly as possible.

With the game newly tied, Winder-Barrow’s Jackson Melton worked a walk to lead off the bottom of sixth inning.

“All I’d seen was curveballs, so I was just going to be taking curveballs until I saw a fastball,” Melton said. “That’s what I did until there were two strikes, and he ended up walking me.”

The next man executed a perfect sacrifice bunt, and a batter later nine-hole hitter Skylor Murphy lofted a fly just deep enough to score Melton and re-tie the game. It took a dive from Rocky Mountain’s left fielder to make the catch, and that extra few seconds needed to gather himself likely made the difference.

“Earlier in the game I had a fly ball to left, so I was just trying to duplicate that,” Murphy said. “I was just trying to put it somewhere in the air so he could get home. Initially (I didn’t think it was deep enough), but when I saw him dive I thought that was good enough.”

The teams dueled the rest of the way through regulation before Winder-Barrow scored a 6-5 walkoff win on a wild pitch in the first extra inning of a consolation game of the National High School Invitational.

Afterward, Winder-Barrow head coach Brian Smith said that was just what he expected from the bottom part of his order.

“That part of the order runs well and bunts well,” he said, “so I knew that was a good time to lay a bunt down and move them over. So when we got the first guy on we knew we had a good chance to kind of force something.”

The win gave the Bulldoggs three wins in their first experience in the NHSI, and a little bit of an edge once the postseason comes around.

“I loved it,” Smith said. “Everything was first class, and what we have in the state of Georgia this year is a neutral-site state championship, so it will be a setting just like this. We go in and a little bit of tournament-type atmosphere to win the state, so it’s great practice for that.”

After lying mostly dormant in the game’s early innings, Rocky Mountain struck for the tying and go-ahead runs in their half of the sixth.

Down a pair in the sixth inning, head coach Scott Bullock called on Lucas Stetter to pinch-hit in the nine-hole. He singled. That turned over the lineup, and the next two hitters walked.

An errant throw put the runners in scoring position, and John Sorensen’s single brought home both men and tied the game. A walk later, Cade Nelson’s humpback liner pulled Rocky Mount into the lead.

After quelling a Rocky Mount rally early in the game, Winder-Barrow made its move in the third when nine-hole hitter Murphy reached on an error to open the inning, and the next two hitters—Patrick DeMarco and Trent Maddox—followed with a double to left and a triple to right to put two quick runs on the board.

Beau Hanna followed with a single up the middle to plate Maddox and extend the Bulldogs’ lead.

Rocky Mount got a run back in the fourth, but their rally was snuffed by a heady fielder’s choice to nab a runner at the plate and a caught stealing to end the inning.

Winder-Barrow tacked on another in the fifth on Hanna’s run-scoring fielder’s choice.