The Bayshore Christian School baseball team closed out its first season of AHSAA playoff eligibility with a state championship, rallying from an opening loss to sweep the final two games of the Class 1A title series against Donoho School of Anniston.
The best-of-three series opened at Montgomery’s Paterson Field, where Donoho took the first game 6-3. But the Eagles regrouped and dominated the next two contests at Riverwalk Stadium, winning 11-0 and 18-0 in five innings each under the AHSAA’s run-rule, to claim the crown.
Bayshore Christian head coach Jeff Hauge said the turnaround from the opening-night loss to the decisive final two games was as close to flawless as he has seen from a team he has coached.
“As a coach, you try to find that perfect game and you practice for that perfect game, knowing that you can’t achieve it,” Hauge said. “But you try to do it. And we were so close. The way our pitchers threw and the way our hitters hit, and our defense didn’t make an error — it was as clean and as close to perfection as you could possibly get on this side of heaven.”
Hauge said his approach for the final two games was to step back and let his players carry the load. “They were taking care of everything themselves,” he said. “John Malone was pumping strikes, our hitters were having incredible at-bats with great two-strike hitting on the day, and we let them put the ball in play and allowed our defense to make plays. We were in the zone.”
Malone was the story on the mound. He earned the pitching win in Game 2 and also started Game 3, working the first three innings. After hitting the first batter he faced in Game 2, he retired 15 consecutive batters and finished with a no-hitter.
Malone said the team’s mindset shifted dramatically after the series-opening loss. “The first day, we were just real flat,” he said. “Myself and everyone, we were just real flat and kind of out of it. I knew after that game, I 100 percent knew we are better than this team. We should beat them.”
He said he challenged his teammates before the first game on the second day of the series. “I told the team, ‘Guys, we should 10-run this team twice.’ I went out there and pitched that game and we won 11-0 and got the win, and then I said, ‘Guys, we should not be content with that; we should 10-run them again.’ It was everything I thought we should have done.”
Players attributed the opening loss to fatigue after a demanding stretch that included final exams the same day the team traveled to Montgomery. Senior Luke Werneth said the difference between the two days of play was stark. “The first night I think we were all a little exhausted, having to finish exams that day and then drive over and only have one day of practice,” Werneth said. “It threw the team off balance. To see us come back and play the way we had been playing all year, it was nice to see that again. That was our team right there.”
The championship came in Bayshore Christian’s first year of AHSAA playoff eligibility after the school transitioned into state association competition. Hauge said a demanding regular-season schedule against strong Mobile and Baldwin county competition helped prepare his young roster for the postseason. “The whole year of playing such a difficult schedule prepared us for the moment that we had that night,” he said. “We saw some of the best pitching that the state of Alabama has right here in Mobile and Baldwin counties. Our guys had some success against them and some nights without success. But what it did was prepare us for the championship run.”
Hauge said the program has been building toward this level for several years. “I wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to make a run this year because of the youth on our team, but I had a good feeling we were going to make a deep run into the playoffs because we did a lot of the basic things in baseball well — we hit well, we throw well, we catch it well. Those are the things I felt could help us out when we got in a playoff run.”
With only one senior and one junior on the roster, Malone said he believes the title is just the start for the Eagles. “I think this is only the beginning,” he said. “I told the guys our goal should be to be in 2A next year. I would hope we are. We had one senior this year and we’ve only got one junior, so this should only be the beginning. We have every reason to believe we could repeat and even three-peat. I really think the sky’s the limit with this team.”
Malone, who has attended Bayshore Christian since he was 6 years old, reflected on the program’s growth from a school with no athletics to a state champion. “I remember when they said, ‘Guys, we’re getting baseball,’ which was great, to playing in a conference that wasn’t really that good and then to start playing teams like Fairhope and Robertsdale. It was great to be able to play those types of teams. It’s really surreal. I never thought we’d be in this spot in our first year of eligibility, especially after losing five seniors from the previous year.”
Werneth said the title capped years of investment in the program, which had its 2020 season cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. “It meant a lot to me, being a part of this program for so long. I think the guys worked hard for it all year. We put everything we have into this, and I’m real proud of the guys for coming as far as we did this year. I think it’s a good way to get our name out there. It was a good accomplishment for the school. Last year they cut us off as we were starting to get things going a little bit. We lost a lot of seniors from last year’s team and I think that was a lot of motivation for us to get better. The community and everybody really backed us up. I really enjoyed it.”
Werneth recalled a team meeting after the series-opening loss that helped refocus the group ahead of the decisive games. “The night after the first game we had a little team meeting: ‘Do you want to come back with a Red state or a Blue state?'” he said, referring to the AHSAA’s state runner-up and state champion trophies. “We all thought about it and changed our mindset and got focused and came out and played that way. It was a really fun bus ride home. We all enjoyed it.”