Less than two weeks into the high school baseball season, Soddy-Daisy has reached double digits in the win column. There were those who had begun wondering if the Trojans would lose and which team would beat them, since their success included two wins over McMinn County and another over Baylor.
Sporting a 10-0 record entering its Ooltewah Invitational game Saturday against Brentwood High, Soddy-Daisy jumped ahead 4-1 on the strength of a towering three-run home run from Tennessee Tech signee Zach Stephens. The Trojans’ lead and their undefeated season unraveled, though, in a mistake-filled fifth inning, and they wound up falling 8-7 to the Bruins at Central High School.
“We cost ourselves on our bunt coverages, which is not characteristic, but we came back and gave ourselves an opportunity to win,” Trojans coach Jared Hensley said.
Reliever Jake Leffew, stung by a fourth-inning homer by Tyson Asheraff — the first batter he faced — walked the leadoff batter in the fifth, and back-to-back bunt singles loaded the bases before Brian Reynolds’ double down the left-field line put the Bruins up 5-4. Leffew got a flyout to center but then surrendered consecutive singles to Asheraff and Bryan Whitt, the latter of which drove in two more runs, before Soddy-Daisy’s second double play of the game ended the inning.
Chris Manka opened the game with a double to right-center off Cody Shelton, Brentwood’s 6-foot-5 freshman, moved to third on a wild pitch and scored on Stephens’ groundout. Stephens later broke a 1-1 tie with his homer into the top of the tallest of the pine trees 20-30 feet beyond the left-field fence. That gave him 25 RBIs for the season.
“I’ve had some pretty good RBI opportunities because the guys in front of me (Manka and Blake Stewart) have been getting on base. They both hit pretty well,” Stephens said.
Stewart, who initiated both of the Trojans’ double plays, went 3-for-4.
Soddy-Daisy tied the game in the seventh on back-to-back homers from James Fowlkes and Tyler Dalton, the Nos. 7 and 8 hitters, but Brentwood won in the bottom of the seventh on Ryan Shelton’s two-run homer. Shelton finished with three RBIs.
Leffew was charged with six earned runs but deserved a better fate because the Trojans should have handled the back-to-back bunts in the fifth better.
“He is going to figure big in our pitching down the road, and I thought he showed a lot of maturity by bouncing back in the sixth,” Hensley said.
Leffew had a 1-2-3 sixth.
Losing, though, had to happen sooner or later, which is what Hensley discussed with his team in a postgame address.
“It has been an awesome two weeks, but realistically in baseball you’re going to get beat sooner or later,” he said. “I was proud of the kids because they didn’t panic when we lost the lead and when we rallied back.”