Brayden Harris pitched his way to a second win in three days.
Now, St. Johns Country Day owns its second state baseball championship in three years.
The senior pitcher worked his way to the win on short rest and the top-seeded Spartans downed Orangewood Christian 6-2 in the Florida High School Athletic Association Class 1A baseball championship on May 16.
Florida State-committed ace Harris, pitching on one day of rest after throwing 45 pitches in the semifinal on May 14, went the distance in a four-hitter to cap a sterling season at Fort Myers’ Hammond Stadium.
Appropriately enough, Harris himself delivered the key insurance run, an RBI single to bring Kaeson Johns across the plate in the sixth for a 4-2 lead. Walks and an error led to two more runs as the Spartans (26-8) pulled away.
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Lighting up the basepaths with seven stolen bases from six different runners on the day, St. Johns raced in front with a three-run third inning, including a squeeze bunt by Preston Cole and RBI singles from Madden Williams and Jonas Wells.
Fighting hard through the maximum 105 pitches on short rest, Harris allowed leadoff batters to reach in five of the first six innings but repeatedly extinguished any trouble. In the fourth, Orangewood got on the board with Sam Lambert’s RBI single, but Harris forced a strikeout and groundout to strand Rams on second and third.
Orangewood (27-4) chipped away again in the sixth when Tre Roach’s sacrifice fly brought home Jack Benson to cut the gap to one run, but the Spartans’ three-run sixth eliminated all doubt.
Harris struck out the side in the seventh, his eighth, ninth and 10th K’s of the game to cue another round of Spartan celebrations.
St. Johns, which also won the 2024 championship under head coach Tom Lucas, joins a select list of Northeast Florida programs to lift the state trophy multiple times.
Harris, meanwhile, concludes his senior season with a 12-2 record and a second consecutive Florida strikeout crown with 165. His total of 526 career strikeouts over five seasons, already more than the career high school mark of MLB strikeout king Nolan Ryan, places Harris among Florida’s all-time leaders.
During his last two years, Harris compiled a 23-2 record with two regional championships, an 0.82 ERA, an 0.750 WHIP and 314 strikeouts.
(This story has been updated to add new information.)
NORTHEAST FLORIDA TEAMS WITH MULTIPLE FHSAA BASEBALL TITLES
8: Bolles
5: Palatka
3: Arlington Country Day, Eagle’s View, Providence, University Christian
2: Bishop Kenny, Lee (now Riverside), St. Johns Country Day, Union County
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Champions! St. Johns Country Day battles to FHSAA baseball title
Reporting by Clayton Freeman, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
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