UIL Baseball state semifinals: Brock falls, Boyd stays alive with Game 2 win
The UIL Texas high school baseball state semifinals are here.
See how Fort Worth-area teams fared in Game 2 of their respective series.
Brock’s season ends in shut out by Longview Spring Hill
Brock’s first season in Class 4A baseball ended one series too soon for the Eagles. Longview Spring Hill took Game 2 of their 4A Division II state semifinal, 2-0, to sweep the series and advance to the championship game.
Spring Hill (34-6), No. 3 in the state in Class 4A according to the Texas High School Baseball Coaches Association, will face Wimberley (26-7-1) for the Class 4A DII state title at 9 a.m. on Friday, June 6, at Dell Diamond in Round Rock. It will be the first state-title appearance for both teams.
Spring Hill defeated No 5. Brock (29-5), 7-6, in eight innings on Thursday, May 29.
For the past 10 season the Brock baseball team has been on an envious run. The Eagles have advanced to at least the regional semifinal round each season.
For the past five seasons now, Brock has reached at least the state semifinal round four times and was the state runner up in 2022 and 2024. The Eagles only title in baseball came in 2006 in Class 2A.
Brock starting pitcher Evan O’Connor pitched well enough to win going six innings allowing two runs, one earned, scattering six hits with one walk and four strikeouts. But the Eagles’ bats struggled against Spring Hill’s Landon Bartell getting a leadoff single in the third from Braxon Roberts and a one-out single by Asa Parenteau in the fifth.
“Evan (O’Connor) pitched his tail off like we knew he was going to do,” said Eagles’ coach Koby Page, in his third year as head coach and seventh season overall at Brock. “That was two games in a row that we didn’t play behind our pitchers and that’s just the way baseball goes sometimes. Things just didn’t go our way.”
Spring Hill got RBI singles from Mason Barnes in the second inning and Cayson Wilkins in the third.
Page said that he loves his players like his own kids and added that he spends more time with his players than he does his own children during the season.
“It’s tough because I’m hard on them, sometimes I demand a lot and I hold them accountable,” said Page, who has eight seniors on his squad this season. “I hope they take more than baseball away from this program because that means more to me than just going on to play baseball. I’m really proud of this group.
“I’m disappointed that we lost, but I’m not disappointed in my kids or their effort. I’ve got a great group of young men and I love them to death.”
Boyd rebounds against Wall to force a Game 3
Boyd had stormed through the playoffs, sweeping the first four series with shut outs in seven of the eight games the Yellowjackets had played. So when Wall punched them in the mouth in Game 1 of their Class 3A Division II state semifinal series, 6-1, they took notice.
Boyd rallied from a run down to score twice in the bottom of the fifth and five more times in the bottom of the sixth to win Game 2, 9-3, and force a Game 3 that is scheduled for 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 31, at Tarleton State University in Stephenville.
Boyd (34-6), ranked No. 4 in the state in Class 3A according to the THSBCA, took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the fourth when Jax Heid walked and Major Jennings blasted a home run to left field. That lead held up until the fifth when Caleb Braden doubled in a pair of runs to highlight and three-run uprising to give No. 2 Wall (29-6) a 3-2 advantage.
Heid, who went 1-for-2 with a walk, two runs scored and two runs batted in, gave the Yellowjackets a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the fifth with a sacrifice fly to score Colton Patton.
Patton, Heid and Jennings all had RBI singles in Boyd’s five-run sixth.
Will McIntire used 90 pitches to make it through five innings allowing three runs, none earned, while scattering three hits, walking one and striking out seven. Evan Salinas and Hayden Miller each pitched a scoreless inning to close it out for the Yellowjackets.
This story was originally published May 31, 2025 at 1:08 AM.