Worth County Heads To Chickamauga For GHSA Baseball Final Four

SYLVESTER — By Wednesday afternoon, the Worth County Rams will board a bus and head north toward Chickamauga, a tiny town tucked into the extreme northwest corner of Georgia, where the roads curve through mountains and baseball dreams tend to get tested.

It’s more than a GPS-figured five-hour drive. Add in meals, bathroom breaks and a stop somewhere to let a restless baseball team loosen up with a few swings, and it becomes something closer to an all-day ride.

Worth County coach Will Smith knows all that.

He also knows his team would probably ride twice that long for the opportunity waiting at the end of the trip.

A chance to play for the GHSA Class A Division I state championship series will be on the line when Worth County faces defending state champion Gordon Lee in a best-of-three Final Four matchup beginning Thursday in Chickamauga.

The series opens with a doubleheader Thursday at 4 p.m. An if-necessary third game is scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m.

Funny thing about Worth County athletics these days: The Rams seem to live for moments like this.

Winning tends to remove fear from teams this time of year.

Earlier this school year, the football team traveled north and came home carrying a state championship trophy. Along the way, the Rams knocked Gordon Lee out of the football playoffs in Sylvester during the Elite Eight round.

Different sport. Same schools. Same stakes. Only now the rivalry shifts from football pads to baseball gloves.

There’s a temptation this time of year to make everything sound cinematic — the long road trip, the small-town team, the defending champions waiting in the mountains. But Smith doesn’t romanticize baseball much. He talks about it the way veteran coaches often do when their teams are still playing in May: calmly, cautiously and with a healthy respect for what can go wrong.

“They are big and fast and have a lot of talent,” Smith said of Gordon Lee. “Their pitchers are going to throw strikes consistently. Any pitch, any count, they can throw it for a strike. They play really good baseball with a lot of confidence.”

That last part lingered.

Because this time of year, baseball usually becomes less about spectacular plays and more about mistakes. About who gives away the fewest outs. About who handles pressure without blinking.

Worth County, however, didn’t reach the Final Four by surviving on emotion alone.

“We’re playing good baseball at the right time,” Smith said. “That’s the reason we’re in the Final Four.”

The Rams can pitch, too.

Avery Kilcrease remains the headline act, the senior ace piling up strikeouts at a rate few pitchers in Georgia can match while also serving as one of Worth County’s top hitters. But the Rams’ postseason run also has revealed something equally important: depth.

Junior DJ Easom threw a complete game in last week’s Elite Eight series. Colby Griffis has delivered big innings throughout the season. Brodey Hancock, the sophomore shortstop and football kicker, has grown into another reliable arm capable of changing a game with his pitching as well as his glove.

In May baseball, that matters. Because the deeper teams usually keep playing.

Worth County’s veteran lineup also has become one of the most dangerous groups remaining in Class A Division I.

Kilcrease, Griffis, Hayden Short, Brady Weaver, Luke Rogers and Caleb Parten have powered the Rams offensively throughout the postseason, while junior third baseman Lyndon Worthy — the quarterback who led Worth County to the football state title — has delivered several clutch hits during the playoff run.

Smith noticed something during practice last Friday that made him smile.

Last Friday’s practice looked more like recess than preparation for the Final Four. Players were sliding through wet turf, jawing at each other between pitches and turning batting practice into something closer to a backyard rivalry game.

“They were getting after it,” Smith said. “Best practice we’ve had all year. We left feeling like we were on Cloud 9.”

Then Smith paused for a moment before talking about what has made this group different.

“These guys love competing together,” he said. “They don’t want the season to end.”

There’s a looseness to Worth County right now, the kind good teams often find late in a postseason run. Not careless. Just confident.

“My guys are giving us their best effort,” Smith said. “We’ve got good attitudes; we are doing the little things, and we are playing ball at a high level right now.”

That confidence will be tested in Chickamauga against a Gordon Lee team that swept Fitzgerald last week and has spent the past year reminding everybody why it is defending the state championship trophy.

But if these Rams have learned anything during this remarkable school year, it’s that championship moments usually belong to the teams willing to stay aggressive after the pressure rises.

“We have to capitalize on mistakes,” Smith said. “Be aggressive on the bases. Put runners in scoring position and let the next guy do his job.”

By the time the Rams finally arrive in Chickamauga, they won’t just be bringing gloves, bats and a baseball team. They’ll be bringing the belief that this school year still has one more championship run left in it.