Searcy completes sweep of Marion

Searcy completes sweep of Marion

Perfect Chambers relegates Pats to scoreboard watching

Sports Editor SEARCY — Marion’s Friday afternoon will consist of scoreboard watching in Jonesboro.

The Patriots (3-24 overall, 3-11 7A/6A-East, 1-5 6AEast) wrapped up its regular season with a 10-0 fiveinning loss to Searcy (15-5 overall, 10-4 7A/6A-East, 4-2 6A-East) here yesterday that was highlighted by senior right-hander Lee Chambers tossing a perfect game to claim the win on the mound for the Lions.

As a result, Marion needs Jonesboro to defeat Mountain Home to force a coin flip for the third and final seed from the 6AEast in this season’s Class 6A state baseball tournament in Sheridan.

“I would have rather beaten Mountain Home up there and not had to worry about it,” said Marion’s fourth-year head coach Daniel Kelley when asked if he would be cheering for Jonesboro to force the coin flip.

The Evening Times had previously reported that Marion would have needed to win in Searcy to make the state tournament, but the tiebreaker only takes into account games against the 6A-East.

That means that since Marion and Mountain Home split their regular season series, and each team won by one run, if the teams finish with identical 5-1 6A-East records then the coin flip will break the tie. A Mountain Home win gives the Bombers the No. 3 seed outright.

A Marion win would have given them the inside track on that final postseason spot, but Chambers was the top of his game from the game’s very first pitch.

Chambers fanned the first two Patriots that he faced, six in all, and perhaps more impressively, faced just one three-ball count all day.

“That’s the conference pitcher of the year,” said Kelley. “He didn’t throw his change-up as much as he did last year, which did surprise me. He’s a good baseball player, and that’s why he’s going to Harding University to play baseball.”

Chambers retired all 15 batters that he faced.

While the righty stifled the Marion bats from the mound, Searcy scored once in the first inning, twice in the third and broke the contest wide open in the fourth with a four-run rally for a 7-0 lead.

In that stanza, five consecutive Searcy hitters reached with one out, aided by a pair of Marion errors. The Patriots made four errors on the day.

Searcy would slap three more runs up in the bottom of the fifth to finish the scoring and enact the run rule, which calls for a game to end when a team leads by 15 runs after three innings, or 10 after five frames.

Marion will now anxiously await the result of the Mountain Home-Jonesboro game today at 4:30 p.m. to realize its postseason fate.

“Do I like it? No, not at all,” said Kelley. “I wish we’d taken care of our end of things, but we just didn’t do it.”

If Marion qualifies for the Class 6A state tournament, it will face defending state champion Sheridan in the first round on Thursday afternoon.

By Chuck Livingston