Southern Alamance baseball makes deepest playoff run in 20 years

Southern Alamance’s season ended with a 13-3 loss to Southern Lee in Game 3 of the Class 6A East regional finals Friday night in Sanford, but the Patriots still left with their deepest playoff run in 20 years and a senior class that set a new standard for postseason baseball at Southern Alamance High School.

Coach Jason Smith said the regular season was “under-whelming” by the program’s expectations, but the Patriots found their footing when the games mattered most. Smith said the team “figured it out” for the postseason, and that showed in the way Southern Alamance handled pressure, answered setbacks and kept extending its season against higher-seeded opponents.

Southern Alamance entered the East bracket as the No. 12 seed. Southern Lee was the No. 2 seed, but the Patriots pushed the Cavaliers to the limit after dropping Game 1, winning Game 2 at home 12-2 in 4 1/2 innings and then falling in the deciding game in Sanford. The bracket showed Southern Lee winning the series 7-3, 2-12 and 13-3 before advancing to the state championship series in Burlington against South Caldwell.

The Game 2 win gave Southern Alamance its first regional-finals appearance in two decades and kept the run alive. Nathan McNeal threw a complete game with 10 strikeouts, Kaden Parker hit a grand slam and Jackson Vaughn drove in two runs as the Patriots controlled the game from the start. That victory also fit the pattern Smith described, with Southern Alamance “performed in big spots” and getting “big hits at the right times.”

The Patriots’ playoff surge had already included one of the upset wins that changed outside expectations. In the fourth round, Southern Alamance knocked off top-seeded Greenville Rose 3-2 in eight innings on Cooper Partin’s walk-off home run. Partin struck out six batters in four shutout innings, and McNeal covered the other four innings in a combined four-hitter.

That momentum carried a step beyond last year’s postseason, when Southern Alamance reached the regional semifinals and also beat Triton 7-1 at Burlington Athletic Stadium in the third round behind Partin’s two-run home run and Mark King’s complete game. This year’s group went farther, won more postseason games than any Southern Alamance class in 20 years and reset what a spring at Southern Alamance can look like, even without a championship trophy to close it out.