Pee Dee's Davis pleased with baseball season despite not winning state

Mullins – A 3-peat was not in the cards for the Pee Dee Academy baseball team.

After winning the SCISA AA state championship in 2022 and the AAA state crown last season, the Golden Eagles reached the AAA championship series last month. However, they were swept in the best-of-3 series by Hilton Head Christian Academy.

While he wishes another state championship trophy could have been placed in the trophy case, PDA head coach Brian Davis was pleased with the season his team put together.

“Dropping the ball at the end and not playing our best was not ideal,” Davis said. “That obviously was a downer, but just for us to get back there after losing four big seniors that contributed a lot the year before was tremendous. To have them out of the lineup and the pitching rotation and us bouncing back and replacing four of those guys shows the program’s in a good spot right now.”

Pee Dee finished 19-5 on the season and won the Region 2 championship with a 6-0 record and had six players selected to the All-Region team. Leading the way was junior Colby Richardson, who was named the Region Player of the Year.

Richardson led the Eagles in hitting with a .468 batting average as well as in on-base percentage at .533, hits with 29 and home runs with four. He also had 20 runs batted in. Pitching-wise, Richardson had a 7-0 win-loss record with 102 strikeouts in 55 innings pitched. He allowed only five runs all season, none of them earned, so he had a 0.00 earned run average. He allowed just 14 hits, 15 walks and two hit batters.

The other All-Region selections were junior Bennett Causey, junior Jamison Rogers, senior Hughes Elvington, junior Miles Trussell and sophomore Tristan Heckman.

Causey led PDA in RBI with 24 while batting .306 with an OBP of .416. He had three doubles, a triple and a home run. Elvington batted .338 with an OBP of .484, two doubles, a triple and 12 RBI. Trussell batted .333 with an OBP of .429, a team high five doubles, two triples and 19 RBI. 

Heckman was 6-3 with a 2.53 ERA and 55 strikeouts in 44 1/3 innings. He batted .298 with an OBP of .500. He had two doubles, a team high three triples and eight RBI. Rogers batted .311 with an OBP of .417 and eight RBI.

Davis said he was pleased with how his team fought its way back to the state championship series after losing to Orangeburg Prep 2-0 in the first game of its 5-team, double-elimination bracket in the state playoffs. The Eagles bounced back with a 3-0 win over Carolina Academy before traveling to Orangeburg and Hilton Head Island twice in a 4-day period. They beat OP 7-4 and then knocked off Hilton Head Prep 6-2 and 14-0 to reach the championship series.

“We worked hard all year to get the No. 1 seed in the bracket only to shoot ourselves in the foot with the loss,” Davis said. “The boys were awesome with their backs against the wall. They fought and found a way to win.”

Pee Dee will be losing five seniors in Elvington, Landon Nobles, London Johnson, Slate Lewis and Griffin Wilbanks.