Head coach J.T. Blair seemed content with the varsity baseball teams 6-0 home win last Friday night, citing it as “a big win” for the team. Pitcher senior Taylor Anderson took the mound for the Chaps and pitched a complete shutout, striking out eight batters along the way.

“He likes to compete,” Blair said. “He’s a competitor, and we’ve seen him do it time and time again. I think it meant a lot to him to finish out the game, so I left him in there.”

The game started off slow for both teams as the first run didn’t come until senior outfielder Denton Apple hit a three-run shot over the left-field wall in the fourth inning, causing controversy as it was originally called as a double.

“We went over the ground rules before the game,” Blair said. “Now that it’s getting warmer, and the trees are starting to bloom, we have a lot of trees that are hanging out over the fence. One thing we talked about before the game was if it hits a tree over the yellow line, that’s a home run. Luckily the home plate umpire saw it and he went out there and fixed it.”

From there, the Chaps scored three more runs in the fifth inning thanks to RBI’s from juniors outfielder Elliot Schwarzbach and catcher Leo Lowin, as well as a triple down the line from senior Peyton Sanderson making the score 6-0.

“I thought we had some really good at-bats down the stretch,” Blair said. “Schwarzbach got a really big two-out triple. Peyton Sanderson had a really good at-bat when he got down in the count, he flipped one through on the left side. But we squared balls up all night long, we just hit them right at [the outfielders] sometimes, and that’s baseball.”

Blair seems confident in his squad with the playoffs coming up in just five more District games. The team faces Lake Travis away this coming Friday in arguably its biggest game of the season.

“We have a lot of passion and energy,” Schwarzbach said. “We come out ready to play every time, our dugout helps us win almost every game. We’re one of the best teams in the state for sure, we just gotta keep playing and we got it.”