Powdersville baseball beats Blue Ridge, earns first trip to state championship series

POWDERSVILLE — Twice in the first three innings, Powdersville baseball left the bases loaded.

Then the Patriots unloaded.

They scored eight runs in the bottom of the fifth inning Friday night, the last three on a homer by Eli Hudgins, to beat Blue Ridge 12-2 by mercy rule for their first Upper State championship.

Braden Williams, who hit a three-run homer off the scoreboard in the fourth inning, delivered a two-run single in the fifth for a 9-2 lead. A walk and a quick single later, Hudgins crushed the first pitch he saw over the right field fence. The Patriots were well into their celebration as they waited for him at home plate.

“It’s weird when it happens that way,” Powdersville coach Wade Padgett said. “I think I asked all four of the umpires, ‘Is that game? Is that it?’ ”

Powdersville (23-9) will open a best-of-three Class AAA state championship series at 6:30 p.m. Monday at Hanahan (29-3). The second game will be Wednesday at home; a third, if necessary, will be at a neutral site.

Powdersville made it to the Upper State championship in 2022, won the first game against Chapman and then lost the next two. Last season, the Patriots were eliminated in the playoffs by Blue Ridge.

“I’m just so proud of the guys,” Padgett said. “We have eight seniors, half the team, and they just didn’t want it to end. They’ve won three region titles, three district titles and now Upper State with a chance for more.”

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Powdersville trailed 2-1 through three innings despite all of the base runners. In the third, the bases were loaded with nobody out, yet the Patriots didn’t score.

“Honestly, I think that affected us positively because we knew we were right on their pitcher,” Williams said. “We were getting runners on, we just had to execute when we got into that position. And that’s what we did, obviously, in the fourth and fifth innings.”

Blue Ridge had its share of opportunities, too, but the Tigers left eight runners in scoring position in the first four innings. Their only quiet at-bat was their last.

“It hurts when the season ends, but this team has nothing to be ashamed of,” Blue Ridge coach Travis Henson said. “It’s been an unbelievable season. This team won 45 games in the last two seasons. That’s a lot of baseball wins. These seniors put our program in a place it’s never been before in these past few years.”

Todd Shanesy is a former award-winning writer who now covers high school athletics for the Greenville News, Spartanburg Herald-Journal and Anderson Independent Mail in the USA TODAY Network. Contact him by email at todd.shanesy@shj.com. Follow him on X, formerly called Twitter, at @ToddShanesySHJ.