Heidelberg wins MPSA title
By By Ernest Bowker / special to The Star
May 21, 2004
VICKSBURG The players on the Porters Chapel Academy bench stared in shock and wide-eyed disbelief at the scene unfolding in front of them.
Out on the field their field a coach was getting doused with ice water, teammates were dogpiling on top of each other, and doing all of the normal things associated with winning a state championship.
A year ago, the Eagles had gotten to do the same thing on someone else's field. This time around, Heidelberg Academy returned the favor and all they could do was sit and watch.
Brooks Lewis held PCA (27-3) to three hits, walked three, and struck out 14 to help Heidelberg (29-0) cap an undefeated season with a 6-0 victory in Game 2 of the Academy-A state championship series.
Heidelberg swept the best-of-three series, avenging last year's state championship series loss to PCA. The Rebels also beat PCA in the 2001 state finals, making this their second championship in four years.
PCA's series-clinching victory last year came at Heidelberg, and the Rebels had never won at PCA in two previous tries. Ending that streak was one of
the Rebels' goals, coach Tom Lewis said.
The series concluded nine days after it began, thanks to a string of rainy days that dumped nine inches of rain on the city, and ended one of the toughest weeks in the history of Porters Chapel Academy. On Sunday, beloved football coach and athletic director Bubba Mims died of a heart attack at his home.
Lewis won both games, striking out 25 batters in 14 innings of work. In Game 2, the Eagles didn't advance a runner past second base and didn't have a leadoff batter reach base until the bottom of the seventh inning.
Heidelberg took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first on an RBI single by Mason Key, and Lewis did the rest.
He struck out the side in the first and second innings, with Josh Gain's single mixed in, and sucked a lot of the emotion out of the Eagles.
Heidelberg tacked on a pair of unearned runs in the third to stretch the lead to 3-0, and PCA never recovered.
The Rebels added three more unearned runs in the fourth to make it 6-0. J.R. Stephenson led off with a single, and Ian Sharp and Brent Welch followed with walks. Two throwing errors by PCA catcher Rob Quimby allowed a pair of
runs to score, and Lewis tacked on an RBI single for the final run.
Lewis allowed base runners in all but the first inning, but never got in serious trouble. He walked Quimby to start the seventh, then got a fly out and two strikeouts to end the game. Almost fittingly, the final out came when Gerald Mims swung and missed at a high fastball.
