RINGGOLD, Ga. – It may have been senior night at Heritage High School on Friday, but a freshman led the way in perhaps the baseball team’s most important win of the season.
Alex Barbee pitched a complete-game four-hitter as the Generals defeated Dalton 6-2 in the finale of a three-game series that decided subregion 7B-AAAA’s second and third seeds heading into next week’s region playoff play-ins. Heritage (14-9, 10-5) will host a best-of-three set beginning with a doubleheader Wednesday against an A subregion opponent to be determined.
Dalton (14-9, 9-6) will travel for its play-in series to the No. 2 A seed.
“With us it all revolves around our pitching and Alex did what he’s done all year, which is keep the ball down and let his defense work,” Heritage coach Eric Beagles said. “He had one rough inning, but he was able to work through it and gave us some great innings. We had a nice game defensively as well, and the guys know they need to make the plays when he’s on the mound.”
Heritage, which lost game one of the series at home Tuesday, used a big third inning Friday to do in the Catamounts. A one-out walk, a single and Logan Haga’s single plated the game’s first run, and Andrew Morton’s sacrifice fly made it 2-0. A walk and a hit batter loaded the bases before Tyler Meroney singled in two, and after a walk and a pitching change, Damian Goins made it 6-0 with a two-run single.