Trojans settle, rout Dalton

Steve Garland saw the opportunity and didn’t hesitate to get his message across. The Soddy-Daisy High School baseball coach knew, with four days to go before his team begins district play, that what he was seeing on the field at AT&T Field would get his team beat.

After his Trojans scored three runs in the top of the first inning Thursday against Dalton, Garland watched them help Dalton tie the score with some sloppy defensive play. After a quick chewing, the Trojans regrouped to rout the Catamounts, 15-5, in five innings.

“We go out there and get a quick lead and then dumb it up a bit, so I went out there and challenged them,” Garland said. “We can’t play that way and expect to beat anybody.”

The main focus of Garland’s visit was senior pitcher Zane Leffew, who allowed three hits and a walk in the first to help ignite Dalton’s rally. From that point he allowed just one more run, despite facing two bases-loaded situations.

“That was a gut-check for Zane,” Garland said. “He’s got the most experience. He’s our senior and he’s already signed with Cleveland State, so I told him we were expecting him to get it done. I challenged him and, by gosh, he anwered it.”

While Garland was pleased with Laffew’s grit, he was overjoyed with the team’s work at the plate. The Trojans (8-2) pounded out 13 hits against three Dalton pitchers, including a 5-for-6 combined line and seven RBIs from the last three batters in the lineup.

The bottom of the order helped put Soddy-Daisy ahead for good in the third inning. With the score still 3-3, Leffew led off with a single, Justin Baier was hit by a pitch and No. 7 hitter Steven Magnussen walked to load the bases. Scott Parrott followed with a two-run single and No. 9 hitter Bubba Haney made it 7-3 with a two-run homer over AT&T’s left-field wall. Haney would add two more hits and two more RBIs.

“It’s kind of funny that I was joking around and told some friends earlier that I was going to hit that guy that sits on the wall with the laptop computer, but he was gone,” Haney, a junior who has spent most of his career in the leadoff spot, said with a laugh. “I really didn’t think I had a chance, but it kept going.”

The Trojans, who open district play Monday with the first of back-to-back games against powerful Red Bank, added two runs in the fourth on RBI hits from Ryan Mullins and Leffew and broke it open with six in the fifth — Haney and Baier driving in two each. Leadoff man Dakota Price and Leffew joined Haney with three hits, while Parrott had three RBIs and Mullins scored three runs.

“Coach Ted Mulder has done a heck of a job with our hitters,” Garland said. “We felt coming in that our strength would be defense. But our batting has really been a surprise. Tonight’s score was really unexpected. Dalton has a great tradition, and (coach) Bobby Brotherton has forgotten more baseball than I know.”

The Catamounts (5-5), who open Region 7-AAAA play Tuesday against Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe, were led by Garren Palmer’s two hits and two RBIs. Carter Crutchfield and Murphy Martin also had RBIs.

“This is spring training for us,” said Brotherton, who assumed head coaching duties after the previous coach, Jed Douglas, was fired before the season began. “We haven’t had a lot of time together, but this is a great group. We’re just really young.”