By Shannon Fagan, WEIS Sports Director
CEDAR BLUFF – Area baseball championships and playoff runs are nothing new for the Cedar Bluff Tigers.
They are new, however, for the Pleasant Valley Raiders.
It’s been 17 years since the Raiders earned their last area title back in 2008. Most of the current Raiders weren’t even born.
But the 2025 Raiders can say they were the ones who broke that streak.
Pleasant Valley outlasted the Tigers 15-13 on Thursday to clinch the Class 2A, Area 13 title. The Raiders jumped out to an early advantage before Cedar Bluff made a game of it. However, 13 walks and several costly errors helped prevent the Tigers from getting over the hump.
“You can’t win against good teams when you give them extra opportunities,” Cedar Bluff coach Colby Coursey said. “When you fight back in the game, you can’t go back out there and give the runs back. You’ve got to be able to hold them, then come back in and get more runs. It seemed like we never had an inning where we didn’t allow one or two runs.”
Pleasant Valley coach Pleasant Valley coach Dalton Turner said he’s proud of the Raiders and his coaching staff for how far they’ve come along.
“We’ve worked so hard over the last two years to get here and do this,” he said. “It’s a very young baseball team. We’ve just got one senior, so we’re excited about the future.”
At one point Thursday, the Raiders built an 11-3 lead before the Tigers rallied to make things interesting. Cedar Bluff sent 12 batters to the plate in the bottom of the fifth, scoring seven runs to make it an 11-10 game.
In that inning, the Raiders were the team that shot themselves in the foot. Three walks, a hit batsman, and two errors led to six of those seven runs.
Pleasant Valley battled back with three runs – aided by four walks, including one intentional – in the top of the sixth to push the lead out to 14-10.
But Cedar Bluff proved resilient again. The Tigers scored three runs in the bottom of the sixth, once again making it a one-run game at 14-13.
“We jumped on them early, but the fifth inning and those middle innings killed us,” Turner said. “Errors, walks, we just didn’t play good baseball in the middle. I think we relaxed a little bit. We thought we were going to run away with it, but they weren’t going to give up. Credit to them. They didn’t give up tonight. That’s a good baseball team.”
It appeared as if Cedar Bluff would head into its last at-bat trailing by one run, but with two outs in the top of the seventh, Pleasant Valley scored an insurance run thanks to a walk to nine-hole hitter Cooper Dougal and a RBI-single to center by Logan Williams.
“Those one or two runs kept extending it out and made a huge difference tonight,” Turner said. “The one run in the top of the seventh was a huge run for us I thought.”
Raider reliever Nick Acker, who came in to pitch with two outs in the bottom of the fifth, slammed the door shut on the Tigers in the bottom of the seventh. He retired Bryson Teague on a pop out to center, then struck out Bubba Chadwick and Kolwyn Morrison to end the game and secure the area title.
“Nick Acker hasn’t gotten a lot of opportunities to pitch this year, but we had to call his number tonight,” Turner said. “We ran up our pitch count with our starter Jake (Barnwell). He did a good job, then Jackson (Acker) came in and struggled a little bit. We went with Nick, and I told him we had all the confidence in the world in him. He went up there and threw strikes. He’s not anything flashy. He’s just going to go up there and spot the ball and throw strikes. That’s all we needed at that point, somebody who was going to throw strikes.”
Nick Acker also led the Raiders at the plate, going 3-for-4 with a walk and drove in two runs. Williams and Wesley Wheeler had a pair of hits. Williams also walked three times and drove in three runs. Wheeler drew a walk and drove in a run. Noah Johnson doubled and walked. Dougal walked three times and Peyton Mann walked twice.
Jacob Chambers went 3-for-4 with a double, a walk and five RBIs for the Tigers. Teague tallied two hits. Samson Mallett and Kuper Bradley both delivered a hit, walked twice and drove in a pair of runs apiece. Caleb Edmondson and Bubba Chadwick both finished with a hit and a walk.
Edmondson suffered the loss on the mound for the Tigers.
“I think for the most part we put it in play,” Coursey said. “We’ve done a good job of scoring runs all season long. We’ve done a good job getting on base, especially the last couple of innings. We got some fight back into us. We know offensively we can go, but we’ve got to be better on the mound and clean up some things on defense.”
Despite the area series loss to the Raiders, Cedar Bluff is still in firm position to finish as area runner-up and clinch a playoff berth.
“We’ve still got a chance,” Coursey said. “We’ve got to have some things to happen, but I like our chances. We’ve got to fix some things and play sharper baseball.”
