Lawrence County baseball makes push ahead of playoffs

Apr. 17—When Lawrence County High baseball coach Carson Jones came back to Moulton to coach his alma mater in 2022, he found his baseball program had lost the will to compete.

"My first team here, that competitive culture had gotten away from them," Jones said. "We had completely lost that."

He said he set out to change that culture but was armed with a young team and knew there were bound to be growing pains.

"I told them, 'Give me two years,'" Jones said. "'Because your junior and senior year, you've got the ability to be really good.'"

Those growing pains showed up in their 4-20 record in Jones' opening year. In 2023, they opened up to a 10-game losing streak and finished the season 8-23.

"We weren't competitive. We were playing teams we should have been beating and we were losing," Lawrence County junior Parker Frost said.

The Red Devils opened up this year 0-7, but Jones said he was never worried because he believed the team was on the brink of regaining that lost culture.

"If you go back and look at those games, we were beating Muscle Shoals 1-0 going into the fifth. We're beating Florence up until the seventh, we had Mars Hill beat," Jones said. "Going through those seven games, we were right on that cusp of the culture and mindset changing."

With eight seniors on the team, Jones knew they needed a push to be the success he saw in them.

"After we went 0-7, I sat them down and I told them that something was going to have to change," Jones said, "because I want them to be more successful than they want themselves to be successful. I think once they realized that was true, the switch flipped."

A few days later, the Red Devils opened up March with their first two wins of the season. They put away Muscle Shoals 15-5 in five innings and Hamilton 5-1 in a double-header.

"Us having two bad, under-10-win seasons made us want it bad," Lawrence County's Kaiden Wear said. "We wanted to get back and be better than we have been and show people we're not trash."

The Red Devils have gone 13-9 since that weekend and now enter their first playoff berth since 2019, winning five of their last six games.

Eli Long, Tripp Engle and Wear are three starters who have been inducted into a distinct club at Lawrence County with this playoff run. They've gotten to play in three different postseasons this school year as three Lawrence County boys' teams — football, baseball and basketball — have made the playoffs for the first time since 2000.

"I think it all started with football, honestly," Wear said. "We had one of the best years we've had in a while and it brought a competitive fire that got us rolling this year. We brought it into area play and it just feels better than any other year."

He mentioned that he and his fellow three-sport teammates discovered the importance of family in success. He said they've committed themselves to creating that brotherhood within the team and seen dividends.

"That's what our new coaches preached to us, Coach (Jeff) Hodge, Coach (Trent) Walker. That we've got to be a family, it can't be individual efforts. We have to come together," Wear said. "I think we've really taken that to heart."

He said there's been an electricity around Red Devil athletics this year, something he hasn't seen in past years. "I think we made a statement," he said.

Wear said that energy has crept into baseball and is part of the reason for their winning play.

"Right now we're swinging it well. We've got guys who just seem to find their way on," Jones said. "Then we have guys that come up after and get a hit in a big spot."

Now, the challenge is to bring that fire into the playoffs.

"I don't think we need to do anything different from what we've done over the past few weeks," Jones said. "I think they understand the mindset now, and they understand that as long as they go out there and play loose and buy into what we're trying to do in that game, we're hard to beat."

The Red Devils will meet John Carroll in Birmingham on Friday for the first round of the Class 5A playoffs.

"We want to set the standard," Engle said. "I know what we're capable of. If we go and play our best round of baseball, there's no doubt that we can go as far as we want to."

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