The 2025 high school baseball season has officially begun with the continuation of an annual Spartanburg County tradition – the Steve Sanders Spartanburg County Preseason Tournament. This iteration of the tourney featured a field of 15 teams from all across Greenville, Spartanburg, Cherokee, and York counties including the defending SST champion Boiling Springs Bulldogs, the 2024 region 2-5A champion Byrnes Rebels, perennial Grenville county powerhouses Saint Joe’s Catholic School, Southside Christian, and Riverside, as well as Broome, Woodruff, Chesnee, Gaffney, Blacksburg, and York.
The 2025 tournament would also be different because one of the 4 host sites only had three teams and one of the sites had to be moved to accomadate for Chapman dropping out to accept an invite to play in the Shipyard Showdown down in Mount Pleasant. The Panthers normally host the Dean Jones bracket, but this time it would go to a school that is much more appropriate for its namesake – Chesnee, where Jones built a legacy in his legendary tenure. Broome, who was the host of the Bill Metcalf bracket, would have to cross-bracket with Dean Jones and would not be able to declare a site champion to advance to championship Monday.
After an action-packed Friday and Saturday, the 3 teams that emerged as site champs were Boiling Springs, Gaffney, and Byrnes. Southside Christian was the runner-up of the Dean Jones bracket, which earned them a berth in the 3rd place game on Monday night where they faced Byrnes and were shut out 7-0. The championship would be a rematch of last year between region 2-5A rivals Boiling Springs and Gaffney.
A year ago, it was an offensive slugfest. Gaffney jumped out to an 8-1 lead in the early innings. But, the Bulldogs did what they have a knack for and fought back with the game on the line, blanking Gaffney over the final 3 innings while scoring 10 unanswered runs over those final innings en route to the win.
This game would be a pitchers’ duel – albeit not at all in the way you would expect. Gaffney Head Coach Jeff Mages gave the starting nod to senior righty and ace Scout Gilfillan. In the other dugout, Jeff Lipscomb opted to give an “open” to junior Cathen Cole. Before diving into how it was a pitchers’ duel in a bullpen game for Boiling Springs, it would be a shame not to tell the story of just how dominant of a performance Gilfillan gave.
To say Scout was dominant almost comes short of giving him adequate credit. He absolutely had Boiling Springs off balance and guessing at the plate all night long, throwing a lot of hard fastballs, but mixing in just enough of his changeup to make for a lot of swings and misses. Boiling Springs third baseman and leadoff hitter Landon Stevens laced an 0-2 fastball to the left field for a double and would take third on the throw in. That would be the only hit Gilfillan gave up in 5 innings of work, striking out 12 and walking 2.
Scout’s lone blemish came in the top of the 4th, and unfortunately ended up being the difference in the game for him. After issuing a leadoff walk to BSHS shortstop Titus Hutchins, who later swiped 2nd to get in scoring position for catcher JD Moore. During a timeout called by Jeff Lipscomb with a 2-2 count, Moore was told one simple thing. “You have to put the ball in play.” The very next pitch thrown to him, JD did just that, chopping a comebacker to the 3rd base side of the mound. Scout came off the mound quickly to field the ball, but rushed his throw to first, air mailing it high off the fencing towards the end of the Gaffney dugout, allowing Hutchins to score unearned for what would be the game’s only run, tagging Gilfillan with the loss.
“I have to tip my cap to Scout Gilfillan”, said Lipscomb. “That kid pitched his tail off and we had nothing for him. He spotted up sliders and fastballs well and he has gotten stronger. He is a very good pitcher.”
That is not to say Boiling Springs’ pitching staff did not also have a strong showing. The Bulldogs threw 6 different arms, and all six of them hung a zero on the scoreboard. Five of the six worked at least 1 inning while Logan Merchant was the lone guy to come back out for a second.
Cathen Cole struck out 1 in a shutout frame after Gaffney leadoff man Brady Smith reached on a throwing error by Landon Stevens. Trying to stretch a 2nd base out of it, he was gunned down 9-6 while a strike out and unassisted grounder to 1st got the Bulldogs out of the inning.
Austin Baird also struck out one in a 1-2-3 inning. Manning Camp (not to be confused with a passing camp for QBs..) logged a pair of K’s with a 1 out double and an E4 with 2 away sandwiched between them to avert a threat with 2 in scoring position for Gaffney.
Merchant worked around a runner in scoring position in each of his frames, striking out 3 while walking one. Kellan Spencer struck out one and left another Indian in scoring position after surrendering a 2 out double to Sam Carroll, getting out of it with a groundout to short.
“Our guys pitched well, too”, said Lipscomb. “We threw out six different pitchers tonight and every one of them put up a zero. It was a good 1-0 baseball game, and a good one to watch. I just hope we can get better at swinging the bats against good pitching.”
Possibly the most “feel-good story” thing to come from this game was the effort from the last arm to take the hill for the Bulldogs – junior Trey Godfrey. Trey had never closed out a game before, much less one with as much pressure as was put on him to come and hold off a team like Gaffney that can hit and had been threatening most of the latter innings in a 1-0 duel. The first hitter he faced was Indian DH Jace Bradbury, who reached on Landon Stevens’ second throwing error of the night and later took 2nd on a sac bunt from pinch hitter Ethan Harvey. With 1 away and a man in scoring position, Godfrey kicked it into gear and ended up pitching what may very well be the inning of his life so far.
He rebounded by striking out Scout Gilfillan on three pitches and ended up getting the win when Sam Smith grounded the first pitch he saw to the shortstop for a 6-3 game-ending put out to give the Bulldogs their 2nd straight Steve Sanders Tournament championship.
“That was a testament to hard work”, Lipscomb said with pride. “If you had told me two years ago that he would be closing out a game, I would have told you there ain’t no way in the world. But, he has worked hard and developed his submarine delivery and for sure we are glad that he is part of our team now”, he later added.
With the preseason tournament and scrimmages out of the way, the focus turns to the regular season, which begins on March 10th for both teams and will feature 2 crucial region 2-5A series right off the bat. Boiling Springs will open against Riverside in a 3 game set with the Monday and Friday games on the road and the Wednesday night contest at Bulldog Park. First pitch is slated for 6:30 in all three games.
Gaffney starts out with the Wade Hampton Generals in a series where they will be home at Jug Wallace Field Monday and Friday and in Greenville for the midweek game. Those games also all have a 6:30 start time.
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