It's rare for a sports team to get a chance at a do-over, but the Live Oak baseball team will get the next best thing this week when it travels to Lake Charles to take on Sam Houston in the quarterfinals of the Division I nonselect playoffs.
The scenario was the same last season when Sam Houston won a best-of-three series 2-0 to advance to the state tournament in Sulphur. Many of the same players are back for both teams as Live Oak will again try to advance to the semifinals for the first time since 2014.
For Live Oak junior pitcher Sawyer Pruitt, one of 15 Eagles who played on last year’s team, the memories from that series are still fresh.
“I remember it hurt bad,” Pruitt said last week after Live Oak got past Parkway in regional round action. “I don’t want to feel that again this year. I’m ready.”
Even though the game scores last year were 5-1 and 11-6, the Eagles played well at times, according to head coach Jesse Cassard.
“We were there last year so we know what we’re getting into,” he said. “It's a hostile environment over there but we’re ready. It should help us that we played there last year. We played well. We just didn’t win.”
One of the keys for Live Oak will be pitching. Last year, the Eagles made their harder than it could have been by issuing 13 walks in the two games.
A clean performance on the mound might be enough to make the difference this time.
Heartbreak for Livingston teams at state softball tourney
At the LHSAA’s championship softball tournament in Sulphur, it was a year for heartbreaking losses. Three Livingston parish teams — Live Oak, Doyle and French Settlement — were chasing state championships, but each one was eliminated in a game it led going into the final at-bat.
French Settlement was seeking to repeat as champion in Division IV nonselect. Instead, the Lions lost 5-4 to Montgomery in a rematch of the 2023 final.
The Division III nonselect title game had No. 2 Doyle trying to win its first title since 2018 against top-seeded Sterlington. The game was scoreless until the bottom of the seventh, when a bases-loaded walk forced in the game-winning run.
Live Oak had a similar fate in its semifinal game against Ponchatoula. After taking a 7-5 lead in the sixth inning, the Eagles eventually lost 8-7 when the final run scored on a sacrifice fly in the bottom of the seventh.
The disappointment in coming so close only to fall short doesn’t take away from the outstanding seasons these teams had.