Early runs, Scruggs lift Southern Lee to Slugfest crown

Apr. 21—ST. PAULS — The Robeson County Slugfest may be the county's biggest baseball event — but in 2022 Southern Lee came for the first time, and crashed the party.

The Cavaliers defeated Fairmont 9-1 in the tournament final Wednesday, becoming the 10th school all-time to win the baseball Slugfest.

Southern Lee did it with some early runs and a strong pitching performance from Kale Scruggs, then put the game away after some defensive mishaps by the Golden Tornadoes late.

"We're in a tough conference, and we've lost six games, five of them have been by one run," Scruggs said. "We wanted to come down here and make a statement and take this win."

Scruggs, hoisted to a 4-0 lead in the second inning, allowed three hits and one unearned run in 6 2/3 innings, striking out 14 batters with no walks. He also had three hits offensively and scored two runs, and was named tournament MVP.

"He's pitched awesome all year; he's lost a lot of close games in our super-tough conference," Southern Lee coach David Lee said. "He's pitched a lot of our tough games and it's good to see him get some breaks."

Southern Lee (13-6) got on the scoreboard quickly with an RBI triple by Cameron Richey, making his first appearance of the tournament, which scored Jalan Jones and Pierce Bouwman for a 2-0 lead. The Cavaliers added two more runs in the second with an RBI groundout by Blake Harrington and a Jones RBI single, making it 4-0.

"We have come out all year and it's been our focus to come out of the gates hot, which everybody wants to do, but our theory is with our pitching and defense, which has, knock on wood, been very good this year, if we get a couple runs early we can put us in the driver's seat a little bit," Lee said.

"I think all of our games in this tournament, the first inning we at least put one on them, and as our pitcher's going out, it's so much easier pitching with the lead," Scruggs said.

Fairmont (15-2) scored its run in the sixth inning when a two-out error kept the inning alive and Stevie Smith singled home the runner.

Before the Smith single, a Malachi Gales single in the third and a Kenley Callahan single in the fourth were the only hits allowed by Scruggs; both came with two outs and Struggs struck out the next batter both times.

"He pitched a heck of a ballgame, give credit to him," Fairmont coach Kelly Chavis said. "To hold this lineup to three hits, you've got to tip your hat to him, he did a heck of a job. We are a good hitting team and he had our number tonight."

Five more Cavaliers runs scored in the sixth after four Fairmont errors in the inning; Cooper Harrington, Scruggs, Matt Powers and Caleb Waters all scored, of which only Scruggs and Waters had reached with hits. The fifth run of the frame scored on a Jalan Jones RBI single to plate Trent McBurnett.

"We misplayed a couple of balls and had a couple balls that got away from us throwing the baseball," Chavis said. "That probably put it out of reach for us at that time — not that we gave up, because we didn't, we had a game plan until the last hitter — but it made it harder for us to scratch our way back into it."

Jalan Jones had three hits, two RBIs and a run for Southern Lee and Pierce Bouwman had two hits and a run, and got the final out on the mound with a strikeout; both were named to the All-Tournament team.

Gales and Noah Parker, who was the winning pitcher with 13 strikeouts in Fairmont's semifinal victory over St. Pauls, were the Golden Tornadoes' All-Tournament representatives.

Southern Lee becomes the first baseball team from outside Robeson County to win a Slugfest championship since Hoke County in 2010, and is the fourth program to do so all-time, joining the Bucks, Marlboro County and Terry Sanford.

"We were happy to be invited; we know this is a big event down here, and we were happy to be here and we wanted to come out here and definitely make a good impression," Lee said. "It was a close game with Lumberton yesterday, and a close game for a while until some things went our way here. So we know about the baseball in Robeson County, and we're happy to be invited and happy we played well."

Chris Stiles can be reached at 910-816-1977 or by email at cstiles@robesonian.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @StilesOnSports.