Vanderbilt commit Talon Haley pitches Lewisburg to MHSAA 6A Championship over Gulfport

PEARL — When the calendar rolls over into June, pitching is always at a premium, and the 2023 Lewisburg Patriots had it in spades.

Coach Rusty Cagle’s bunch rode another stellar pitching peroformance to an 11-0 win over Gulfport to clinch the program’s first Class 6A state title, sweeping the two-game series from the South State Champion Admirals.

It was the program’s first title since 2014, when the Patriots clinched a 4A Championship.

The City of Lewisburg has grown a lot in the intervening decade, and so has the baseball program.

In Tuesday night’s 2-1 Game 1 win, starting pitcher Cayden Baker was the star. In Thursday night’s series clincher, sophomore Talon Haley shut the Admirals down again, scattering three hits over six innings with one walk and nine strikeouts.

The Vanderbilt commit threw 59 of his 101 pitches for strikes. The two starters for Lewisburg gave up a combined five hits in 12.2 innings.

“I feel like we’re blessed with out pitching staff and the coaching staff that pushed us all year,” Haley said after picking up his Series MVP Trophy. “All preseason we were working to get here… And last year, getting put out in the first round of the playoffs, that really motivated us.”

The first win in the series matched the Patriots’ blueprint of scratching off a couple of runs and relying on great pitching. In Game 2, they got the great pitching performance and absolutely exploded offensively.

Lewisburg pounded out nine hits, including a two-run double from Gunnar Gilmore, and drew nine walks as a team.

The Patriots scored two runs in the first, two more in the fourth, one in the fifth and tacked on six more in the top of the seventh inning to put the icing on the cake.

The championship marked a huge milestone for a program that began just 17 years ago.

“We’re just a booming area,” Lewisburg coach Rusty Cagle said. “(Families) just want to move into our area and build houses. This group of guys moved in seven, eight or nine years ago, and we’ve been building it ever since.

“We’re tough. We’re unselfish.”

Easton Fesmire, Austin Hanigan, Gage Haley and Trae Cagle all drove in runs for Lewisburg. Gilmore went 2-for-2 with a pair of RBIs and two walks and senior Jarrett Morris picked up three RBIs on two singles.

Gulfport junior Ethan Garner picked up two hits for the Admirals (23-12). Jacob Palazzo and Braxton Williams accounted for the other two.

The back-to-back losses were the first for Gulfport since the first week in March.

“The Haley kid is good,” Gulfport coach Jamie MacMahon said. “And they got the two runs early for him, so that always helps. He’s really competitive and good. The game was closer than that, but they did what they needed to do late to get it out of hand.”