By KELLY FENTON
Leader sports editor
FAYETTEVILLE — “No Excuses”? How about “No Quit,” instead?
A season filled with hardship and heartache prompted the Sylvan Hills Bears to adopt a no-excuses credo midway through the season, and they went so far as to emblazon those words onto their T-shirts.
Maybe that was in their minds when they entered the sixth inning of the 6A state championship game on Saturday, trailing 4-0, and facing one of the better pitchers in the state.
But Clint Thornton brought the Bears back from what appeared to be certain defeat with a rousing, game-tying 3-run homer in the seventh inning, and D.J. Baxendale delivered the go-head run with a 2-out single as the Bears held on for a dramatic 5-4 win over Watson Chapel at Baum Stadium. It was Sylvan Hills’ seventh state baseball title — their third in six seasons.
“Unbelievable,” said Sylvan Hills head coach Denny Tipton, whose Bears endured the death of former player Taylor Roark in January as well as the loss of their field to a tornado in April. “These kids have been through everything. They just never give up.”
Watson Chapel head coach Wayne Richardson, who just completed his 27th year as Wildcat head coach, gave all the credit to the Bears.
“(Baxendale) is a good pitcher and Sylvan Hills is a good ball club,” he said. “We played a great team and you’ve got to make the plays. We didn’t get a couple of them and it came back to haunt us.”
A game that figured to be a low-scoring pitcher’s duel between Sylvan Hills junior ace D.J. Baxendale and Watson Chapel’s dynamic duo of Michael Newby and Chance Cleveland, was precisely that through four innings. Goose eggs crept across the scoreboard, with neither team collecting a hit through the first three innings.
But after retiring the first 11 Wildcats, Baxendale suddenly began to run into trouble. He pitched out of a two-on, two-out jam in the fourth, but he wasn’t as fortunate in the fifth, when the Wildcats jumped on him for five hits and four runs to take a 4-0 lead. That had to seem like 40-0 the way Newby had mowed down the Bears through the first five innings.
“(Watson Chapel) has an excellent ball club and excellent pitching,” said Tipton, who captured his third state title in 11 years with Sylvan Hills. “You know, you’re down four with those two guys on the mound. Watson Chapel had to be feeling good.
“That’s why I’m so proud. It’s really easy right there to quit. You could say, ‘Hey, we’re not going to score any runs (against their pitching).’ But they battled and battled. That’s the key word right there. They never gave up and got the key hits when we needed them.”
The Bears got one of those four runs back in the top of the sixth on Thornton’s double and Mark Turpin’s RBI single to open the inning. That chased Newby for Cleveland. After Watson Chapel second baseman Antwoine Jackson turned Hunter Miller’s certain double play grounder into an error, the Bears were in position to get right back in it. But Cleveland got the next three batters, leaving the Bears facing a formidable 3-run deficit heading into the final inning.
Relief pitcher Chris Daulton, who got the win, kept the Bears in it with a 1-2-3 sixth.
Tipton said his club approached the final inning with the right attitude.
“They’re a close-knit group,” he said. “The last inning, right before they went up there, they just said, ‘Let’s just finish this thing strong. We started this thing; let’s finish it.’”
Jordan Spears beat out an infield single for a promising start and Jake Chambers lined a solid single to center. Blake Evans struck out, bringing the top of the order and Thornton to the plate.
After watching a pair of Cleveland’s curve balls miss wide, Thornton got the pitch he wanted — a 2-0 fast ball — that he sent soaring into early evening dusk and onto the hillside beyond the left-field fence.
“He had a real good curve ball,” Thornton said. “I was just hoping he’d throw me a fast ball because everyone was saying it was flat. He had been throwing his curve for strikes but we just kept waiting for the fast ball. When he threw it, he threw it right down the middle. I hit it, and that was the best feeling I ever had.”
Tipton said he knew from the moment the ball hit the bat that it was a brand new ball game.
“It was gone,” he said. “I knew it was gone. I was thinking, game tied. He’s been clutch for us all year. Just unbelievable.”
That, of course, merely tied the game. And after Cleveland settled down for a strikeout, it was beginning to look like extra innings would be Sylvan Hills’ only hope.
But the speedy Hunter Miller beat out an infield hit and stole second.
“I talked to D.J. before I got up to bat and he said, ‘Hunter, get on and steal, and we’ll do what we always did and I’ll get you in and we’ll win this thing,” Miller said.
Cleveland ran the count to 3-0 on Baxendale, who was granted the green light by Tipton. That proved to be the right decision as Baxendale, who won the Most Valuable Player award in the game, lined the 3-0 pitch into right center as Miller came around third to score easily and give the Bears (29-6) a 5-4 lead.
“Coach told me to look for my pitch,” Baxendale said. “I knew Cleveland was a great pitcher and he likes to come in with his curve ball. I looked away, he threw it away, and I just took it to right just like coach has taught us all year.”
Nathan Eller then came in to pitch the final inning. He set down the first two before Baxendale, who had moved to third base, hauled in Chase Smith’s pop foul near home plate to secure the win. Watson Chapel finished 23-4.
It was Sylvan Hills’ third title in as many classifications over the past six years. The Bears had won the 4A title in 2003, and the 5A title (then, the state’s largest class) in 2005.
Next year, they move back down to 4A again, and Baxendale said he sees no reason they won’t be right back at Baum, playing for their eighth title.
“We had the motto, ‘no excuses,’” he said. “And it just so happened it worked out perfectly this year. From the parking lot practices (the Bears didn’t have a field to practice on after the April storms) to dealing with Taylor’s death to helping our own player after his house got destroyed by the tornado, we had no excuses.
“We just had to find a way to get it done, and we finally got it done in the end.”
Miller, who will head to Ole Miss next fall to play football for Houston Nutt, said it was a rough season, but ultimately, the most fulfilling one.
“We could have given up when we lost a teammate,” he said. “But we didn’t. We stuck together and came closer as a team when that happened. We’re all like brothers now.
“This is what we wanted. This was our goal: to come up here and win this.”
