How Powdersville baseball won state title with Clemson commit regaining his pitching form

GILBERT – In warmups for the Class AAA state championship game, Powdersville baseball starter Landon Fowler felt he had pinpoint control of all his pitches

He had to wait an extra hour of a weather delay to find out for sure. But following the delay, Fowler proved himself correct. He was still sharp.

“The delay,” he said, “was just delaying the dogpile.”

Fowler pitched six shutout innings and Powdersville held on to beat Hanahan, 9-5, Saturday at Gilbert High School for the Patriots’ first state championship. The junior right-hander and Clemson commitment bounced back from a rare sub-par performance in the first game of the best-of-three series.

“Landon’s stuff is second to none. That's why he’s going to Clemson,” Powdersville coach Wade Padgett said. “I just thought we were going to get his best effort and it would be hard to argue that we didn’t. He was outstanding.”

In this one, Fowler allowed only two hits, walked one and struck out three. He turned it over to relief pitchers with one out a 9-0 lead in the seventh. It took a little while longer than expected, but the dogpile did happen.

“It’s surreal,” Fowler said. “I’ve been playing with these guys since I was 7 or 8 years old. It feels great to win it all with them.”

Fowler was also 2-for-3 and drove in three runs. Chance Kennedy was 2-for-4 with two steals and a run scored. Coates Reid was 1-for-3 with a walk and scored twice. Braden Williams had two hits and two runs. Eli Hudgins had a hit and scored twice. Maddox Robinson drove in two runs. 

Powdersville (25-10) lost the first game, 9-5, at Hanahan (30-5) and bounced back Wednesday at home with a 5-4 win in 12 innings.

“I’m just so proud of the guys,” Padgett said. “We beat a great team and a deserving Lower State champion in Hanahan.”

In the opening game loss, Fowler went only four innings and allowed four runs (three earned) on six hits and three walks.

“When we played on Monday,” Powdersville catcher Evan Moon said, “only the fastball was there. They were able to sit on it because the slider was just washing out. This time, he was filling up the zone and all his pitches were there. In the first inning, he was able to flip a couple in there. I knew that if it stayed like that, we could ride it the whole game.”

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Todd Shanesy is a former award-winning writer who now 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.