Faith Academy baseball advances to the playoffs
CAPTION: Braxton Blair is one of several sophomores who is helping the Flames get back to the postseason again. Photo by Stennis Shotts
The Faith Academy of Marble Falls baseball team is back in the Class 3A playoffs of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools. That’s three of the last four years and two in a row under the direction of second-year head coach Rob Ellis.
Not bad for a Faith team that has 11 sophomores and two upperclassmen.
“They’re younger, more inexperienced players, and they’re starting to improve,” Ellis said. “Baseball is a highly skilled type of game.”
The Flames will face a familiar foe, San Antonio Lutheran, at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 24, in San Antonio. Lutheran won both games the two played – 7-1 and 10-5 in eight innings.
Faith took two byes last week but still practiced.
“We’ve been really trying to clean up some of the obvious issues,” Ellis said. “We’re almost entirely sophomores. We’ve been doing a lot of offensive work with hitting machines and live hitting. We’ve been practicing bunting. We’re trying to get the ball in play more. We’re starting to see improvement. We’ve been working on special things that Lutheran is really good at.”
One is a pick-off move by one of Lutheran’s starting pitchers that’s “nasty.”
“We’ve been focused a lot on getting productive in the batter’s box and base running,” the coach said.
Though no one likes to lose, Ellis was encouraged by the extra-inning loss. He pointed out it was 5-5 in the seventh inning before the Flames made a change on the mound.
“We ran out of pitches,” he said. “They’re a lot older than us, but we played them well.”
The Flames enter the playoffs after losing to Waco Live Oak 15-1 April 8 and 7-3 April 10. The Falcons are the undefeated District 3-3A champions at 8-0.
“Clearly they’re the best team in the district,” Ellis said. “They gave up (very few) runs all of district. We played them really close. It was 3-3 going into the fifth inning. We had the fans quiet.”
His son, Austin, “pitched well.”
“They ended up breaking it open in the end,” the coach said. “They had seven seniors for their senior night. We played them really well. Their coach told me we hit the ball hard and more consistently than others. It’s a competitive rivalry. They broke it open at the end.”
