Heflin, AL – Tinney pitches complete game, has three RBIs as White Plains wins Game 3 with Cleburne County, secures first baseball playoff berth in nine years.
Blake Jennings’ first year as White Plains’ head football and baseball coach has been quite productive.
The Wildcats came within one victory of their first football playoff berth since 1994, and they just secured their first baseball playoff berth in nine years,
Cooper Tinney singled and drove in three runs and pitched a four-hitter Saturday as White Plains beat Cleburne County 10-3 in the third and decisive game of their Class 4A, Area 9 series.
The victory clinched White Plains’ spot as area runner up to Jacksonville. The Wildcats (11-17) will open the playoffs with a best-of-3 series at Etowah. Dates and times to be determined.
Jennings, who came to White Plains after 10 years as Ohatchee’s head baseball coach and defensive coordinator in football, praised his six White Plains seniors.
“I am just so proud of these boys and the six seniors,” he said. “They’ve worked so hard in the weight room, the field, and have just bought into everything we have preached as coaches.
“This is the first time in nine years White Plains has made the playoffs in baseball, and all that credit goes to those players. We expected this of them and talked about it from day one of practice. Pressure is privilege. It means things are expected of you. This is what is expected at White Plains now. We expect to win.”
White Plains won Friday’s series opener 13-5, and Cleburne County took the second game 10-5 to set the stage for Saturday’s winner-take-all Game 3.
Tinney struck out four batters and walked one while allowing two earned runs in seven innings.
Paul Laube singled, scored three runs and had two RBIs, and Ian Douglas went 1-for-1 with a run and two RBIs.
Braxton Curles was 2-for-5 with an RBI.
Cleburne County (14-6) tied the game at 2-2 on Kannon Robertson’s two-run home run in the fourth inning and took a 3-2 lead when Gabriel Wickersham scored on a dropped third strike in the fifth inning.
White Plains answered with four-run rallies in the sixth and seventh. The rallies included Tinney’s two-run single in the sixth. Douglas’ two-run single and RBI singles from Laube and Curles accounted for the White Plains seventh.
