Watson Chapel claimed the 5A-Southeast Conference title Tuesday with a doubleheader sweep of crosstown rival White Hall, winning the first game 3-2 in eight innings and finishing with a 3-0 blanking of the Bulldogs in the nightcap.
The two wins helped the Wildcats (24-6, 13-1 in 5A-Southeast) earn the top seed entering the 5A state playoffs and relegated the Bulldogs (14-11, 10-4) to third place behind Sylvan Hills.
Justin Dardenne (6-2) and Zach Bradford (8-0) recorded the complete-game wins for Watson Chapel. Dardenne went all eight innings in the opener, allowing eight hits, walking one and striking out eight while Bradford gave up seven hits, struck out eight and worked around five walks and a pair of Wildcat errors in the shutout.
Watson Chapel coach Chad Cope said he wasn’t sure which performance was more impressive.
“You have guys that come into this situation and throw complete games … those were equal performances,” Cope said. “Those two guys pitched two great games. When you don’t have to go to your bullpen that just means both guys did a great job.”
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Dardenne said he knew the Bulldogs had to win the first game to stay in the hunt for a league title.
“Coming into the game I knew the first game would be the hardest, which it was,” Dardenne said. “I wasn’t really nervous, just anxious to get out there. Once I got out there I was feeling good. I knew I was throwing the ball well and had good control.”
Dardenne was matched pitch-for-pitch in the opener by White Hall’s Tyler Zuber (4-3) through the first three innings before Watson Chapel got to the right-hander.
After the Dogs took a 1-0 lead in the top of the fourth on a double by Jacob Holland the Wildcats scratched out two runs on three consecutive base hits in the bottom of the inning. After Dardenne fanned to start the frame, Bradford and Reece Huffty singled to set the stage for V.J. Dickson, who delivered a base-clearing triple to the right field corner to give the Cats a 2-1 edge.
The Bulldogs knotted the affair in the top of the sixth when Cannon singled and scored on a Justin McCarty RBI single with two outs. After a scoreless seventh and top of the eighth, Dickson again came through in the clutch with the bases loaded in the bottom of the stanza with a solid single through the right side to plate the winning run in walk-off fashion.
“I knew Reece (Huffty) was going to try to bunt the runners over,” Dickson said of the final at-bat. “I knew if he got them there I was going to try to get a ball through the infield to try to score the run. I was pretty confident going up there just trying to put the ball in play and hit it hard somewhere.”
Dickson then doubled and scored in the second inning of the nightcap in what proved to be the only run the Cats would need as Bradford worked around trouble all night, stranding 14 Bulldogs on the base path, including a bases-loaded first and sixth.
“We stranded 14 guys,” White Hall coach Skip Carr said. “I told the guys we have to start hitting with men on base. We work hard to get them on base and then don’t finish. With guys in scoring position our batting average was zero. That’s been our problem all year. The pitching has been good and we have played good defense. We just aren’t hitting the ball.”
The Cats added insurance runs in the fifth when Landon Coleson doubled and scored and Dardenne singled and scored the final run of the game. Bradford then escaped further trouble in the final three innings, including a bases-loaded jam in the sixth and a leadoff double to McCarty in the seventh.
“I struggled with throwing strikes early on, actually the whole game,” Bradford admitted. “I finally got the ball down enough to get some ground balls and my teammates did the rest.”