Jim Mashek

SPARTANS SHORTSTOP/PITCHER GRIFFIN RARDIN NAMED 4th REGION TOURNEY MVP; SOUTH COACH CHRIS GAGE DEDICATES GAME TO INJURED DAUGHTER, CHLOE

South Warren High School’s baseball team has been ranked among the top teams in the Commonwealth for the last three months and change, but the Spartans were looking at the end of the road multiple times in Wednesday night’s thriller of a KHSAA 4th Region Championship Game.

Time and again, the Spartans came back against a dogged Warren East squad, a team that turned the tournament upside down on Tuesday with a 2-0 victory over KHSAA 14th District champion Greenwood.

South Warren is known for its potent bats, and multi-purpose players such as senior Spartans Griffin Rardin and Ethan Reynolds, but they’ve had to overcome a run of injuries to stay in contention with the likes of Louisville’s Trinity High School, Pleasure Ridge Park and McCracken County.

Warren East had something else in mind.

The Raiders bolted to a 5-0 lead, behind senior right-hander Matthew Escalara, and held on for dear life for the next four or five innings at WKU’s Nick Denes Field. Warren East coach Wes Sanford was running low on available arms, to put it mildly, but South Warren’s Chris Gage had no such concern.

And the Spartans started running out of time, or to be more precise, running out of outs.

South Warren’s Jax Decker fueled his team’s comeback hopes with a two-run home run to the left-field corner in the bottom of the sixth inning, pulling the Spartans to within 7-5, and Sanford had to turn to freshman left-hander Trace Cunningham to get the final out of the frame, a two-men-on, two-out line drive off Rardin’s bat that was run down in deep left-center field by the Raiders’ Brenden Bratcher.

Still, the Raiders clearly had the upper hand. And then …

The bottom of the seventh arrived. Ethan Reynolds opened the inning by ripping a line drive over the fence in left-center field, trimming South’s deficit to 7-6. Junior Perkins followed with a single up the middle, and then Spartans senior second baseman Ty Croghan put the ball in play, reaching safely on a Warren East error.

That’s when the Raiders’ Wes Sanford started to second guess himself.

Sanford returned to the mound and brought Matthew Escalara back to pitch, even though he wasn’t far from the KHSAA mandated limit for a single game. Escalara induced a ground ball from South’s Jax Decker, and the Raiders retired Perkins at third base on the fielder’s choice. South’s Casey Green then reached safely on an infield hit, a high hopper that loaded the bases with one out.

Escalara recorded a strikeout against South’s first baseman, Gray Pearson, but the Raiders were still one out away form their first trip to the state tournament since 2011. That’s when Escalara began to struggle with his location.

Spartans catcher Joseph Fentress, a sophomore who has split his team’s catching duties with Tucker Sears all season long, drew a bases-loaded walk to tie the game at 7. And that meant Camden Page, the Spartans’ three-sport sophomore standout — football, basketball and baseball — would be stepping to the plate with the game on the line.

Page worked a full count on Escalara before taking a game-winning ball four, bringing Decker across the plate for the winning run, 8-7. The overflow crowd at WKU’s Nick Denes exploded, with joy on the South Warren side and a disheartened one behind the Warren East dugout.

The Spartans are going back to Lexington. They’ll take an overall record of 30-8 into their first-round game at UK’s Kentucky Proud Park. Warren East finishes its season at 12-20, but the Raiders could take pride in nearly beating some imposing odds in a 4th Region Tournament to remember.

The Spartans did a dogpile along the first-base line, burying Page under the celebrating mound of humanity, and they live to fight another day.

“(Escalara) had thrown me one curveball,” Page said when it was over. “I had the green light (to swing) … If he threw me a strike, I was gonna try to hammer it … It was a little crazy out there.

“We thought as long as we had three outs to work with, we had a chance.”

It was an emotional scene for South Warren coach Chris Gage and his family. Chloe Gage, a student at the University of Louisville, was seriously injured in a car wreck last summer and continues to recover. Chloe Gage was on the field for Wednesday night’s awards presentation, and the Spartans were in no hurry to leave the stadium.

“This one is special, for sure, with everything my daughter’s been through,” Gage said. “So this one’s for Chloe. She’s shown toughness beyond belief. That’s where I think maybe even our team got a little toughness, watching all that.”

South’s Griffin Rardin, the younger son of WKU baseball head coach Marc Rardin, said the Spartans never lost hope, or let their concentration level dwindle, even after falling behind by as many as five runs.

Warren East’s Dane Parsley, a four-sport letterman and the Raiders football team’s starting quarterback since his freshman season, crushed a pitch from South Warren starter Mikey Coradini for a two-run triple to right-center field in the top of the first inning. Gage made his pitching move in the second inning, moving Ethan Reynolds to the mound from left field.

Reynolds, a WKU signee, had missed the bulk of the 2025 season after undergoing hand surgery.

Warren East’s William Alexander belted an RBI double to right field, and teammate Brenden Bratcher scampered home on a South Warren error, extending the Raiders’ lead to 5-0. Griffin Rardin, a baseball/basketball star who will play next season at Shelton State (Alabama) Community College, knew the game was a long way from over.

“We’ve been in those situations before,” Rardin said. “We just needed to start chipping away …”

And that’s what they did.

South’s Gray Pearson scored on Griffin Rardin’s RBI single to shallow center field in the third, getting the Spartans on the board with their first run of the game. Rardin added another run-scoring hit in the fifth, a line drive to center field that scored pinch runner John Mosley.

The Raiders, meanwhile, started hacking away their own selves. Bratcher delivered an RBI single up the middle, in the sixth, and sophomore outfielder Carson Choate followed suit with two outs, extending the Warren East lead to 7-2. It was enough to give Chris Gage and his South Warren coaching staff some pause.

“I think … I”m not very smart,” Gage said in a self-effacing tone. “I like to let my assistant coaches do the work. With all the injuries we’ve had, not having Ethan Reynolds most of the season … When (Warren East) put up that two spot, I would’ve quit …

“But our players didn’t.”

In the top of the seventh, South Warren’s Jax Decker made a sensational, running catch of Dane Parsley’s line drive to deep right field, robbing Parsley of a sure-fire triple to lead off the inning. By then, South Warren’s Griffin Rardin was on the mound, moving over for shortstop, while Page switched to short from third.

The chess game between Gage and Warren East’s Wes Sanford continued in the bottom of the seventh, as freshman left-hander Trace Cunningham gave up the leadoff home run to Reynolds. Matthew Escalara, the Raiders’ starting pitcher, was running on fumes, but he quickly took the ball from Sanford and did what he could do.

“I should have brought Matthew in for the start of the inning,” Sanford said. “It was a tough spot for him. The sixth inning really killed us. It allowed them to turn the lineup over, for the seventh.

“There’s a lot of ‘what-ifs,’ but that’s also part of baseball. I’m so proud of this team. They played so hard. They continued to grind, all the way to the end.”

The sportsmanship on display during the awards presentation was impressive. The South Warren players applauded when Warren East received their team trophy, and vice versa. South Warren put four players on the all-tournament team — Reynolds, Page, Decker and tourney MVP Griff Rardin — while the Raiders were represented by Brenden Bratcher, Brooks Vincent and Matthew Escalara.

South’s Chris Gage reminded other Warren County Public Schools officials that there’s “more work” on the horizon, as the Raiders make their fourth state tournament appearance since the school opened in 2010.

“We left it all out on the field,” Gage said.

The Spartans will be leaving for Lexington next week.