How Southside Christian baseball set home run record in winning Upper State
Not even any of the Southside Christian baseball teams that won state championships in each of the past four years hit home runs like this.
CJ Aubuchon’s second homer of the game May 20 at Sabre Park secured a 12-4 win against Chapman for the SCHSL Class 3A Upper State high school title and set the single-season team record for home runs at 26.
Southside Christian (24-8-1) will have at least two more chances to add to it, beginning at home May 23 for the start of a best-of-three state championship series against either Oceanside or Hanahan.
“We’ve been hitting the ball really well,” Aubuchon said. “We’ll just try to keep that going.”
Aubuchon, a 6-foot-4 senior left-hander who signed with Samford, was 3-for-3 with six RBIs in the first four innings. He has six homers this season.
“He’s done a great job for us,” Southside Christian coach Scott Freeman said. “He’s been kind of a dead-pull hitter a lot, so it was great to see that he hit two opposite field home runs tonight. His approach has been incredible, especially in the last five or six games. He makes them throw strikes and when they do, he makes them pay for it.”
Aubuchon hit a three-run homer in the second inning for a 7-4 lead. Kaden Graham hit a two-run shot in the third to tie the team record at 25.
Chapman (15-15), which needed to win twice to get to the Upper State title, had a 4-0 lead in the first inning without a hit.
In fact, if not for a line drive single to right field by the Panthers’ Nate Ianitello in the fifth inning, Southside Christian would’ve had one of the weirdest and worst combined no-hitters ever recorded. Sabres pitchers walked a dozen and plunked four.
“Games like that obviously aren't fun to watch,” Aubuchon said. “But it’s baseball. Stuff like that happens. We have total confidence in our pitchers. And we can fall back on our bats.”
Southside did not use top senior pitchers Bennett Candler (3-0, 1.93 ERA) or Carson Bolemon (6-0, 0.19 ERA). Boleman is a Wake Forest commit but is considered a top prospect who could be picked in the first couple of rounds in the Major League Baseball draft.
Despite the free passes, Chapman was held hitless and scoreless by Southside Christian for the last six innings. The Panthers left 13 runners on base.
“I looked down and it had been 55 minutes, and we were in the bottom of the second,” Freeman said. “I thought, ‘Whoa, we’re going to be here for a while.’ It was tough getting into a rhythm. We don’t mind pitching to contact and using our defense. But we just couldn’t get into the flow of things for a long time.”
Todd Shanesy covers high school athletics for the Greenville News, Spartanburg Herald-Journal and Anderson Independent Mail in the USA TODAY Network. Contact him by email at todd.shanesy@shj.com. Follow him on X, formerly called Twitter, at @ToddShanesySHJ.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Four-time SCHSL baseball state champion Southside Christian wins Upper State
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