A walk-off walk sends the Rebels into the off-season and ends deep postseason run

PROSPERITY, S.C. — The Mid-Carolina Rebels varsity baseball team looked to return back to the Upper State Championship but fell short. The Rebels(22-9, 10-0 region 3-AA) fell 4-3 to Strom Thurmond(16-10) on Monday, May 19 to end their season.

Mid-Carolina lost the first game, 5-3, of the championship bracket for 2A baseball state playoffs against Storm Thurmond on May 15. The Rebels bounced back to beat Clinton by the score of 2-0. Now, they had a tall order to go on the road to beat the Strom Thurmond twice to move on.

Unfortunately, that did not happen and the Mid-Carolina historic season came to an end. The two teams were scoreless through four innings, and then Strom Thurmond struck first with a run at the bottom of the fifth inning. They took a 1-0 lead into the sixth inning.

Mid-Carolina quickly responded with three runs at the top of sixth inning to get their first lead of the game and were now only six outs away from making another Upper State Championship appearance.

Strom Thurmond matched Mid-Carolina’s three-run inning with a two of their on. The home team sent a ball over the fence for a solo home run to cut Mid-Carolina’s deficit. Strom Thurmond then tied the game on a controversy call with a base runner on third attempting to steal home and then gets caught in a run down. Somehow he was able to avoid a tag and make it back to third base safely which sent the Mid-Carolina’s visiting fans into a frenzy.

Strom Thurmond then gets a sacrifice fly to score another run that tied the game at 3-3 before Mid-Carolina retired the side. The Rebels of Mid-Carolina couldn’t get anything going and now had to make sure they didn’t give up anything at the bottom of the seventh inning.

The home team Rebels of Strom Thurmond started the inning off strong with a double. The base runner then advanced to third base after a bad throw on a pick off attempt. Mid-Carolina intentionally walk one batter and unintentionally walks another batter to load the bases. Then, of course a third unintentional walk sends Strom Thurmond to the championship game and Mid-Carolina into the off-season.

The Rebels came up short, but had another great season that was capped off with another deep playoffs run. Congratulations to Mid-Carolina and head coach Lindsey Stribble on winning his 250th career game this season.