The Zone 3 American Legion (AA) baseball tournament, originally scheduled to begin Saturday, has been pushed up to Friday starting at 3 p.m. at Mare Square. This is Heber’s first time to hold an American Legion zone baseball tournament.
Third-seeded Cabot opens first round play against fourth-seeded Brinkley at 3 p.m. with second-seeded Conway NBMC and the fifth-seeded Conway Cougars immediately following at approximately 5:30 p.m.
The final game on Friday features sixth-seeded Rose Bud Razorback Auto Sales against the seventh-seeded Stuttgart Ricemen around 8 p.m.
The Ricemen would have grabbed a seeded higher, likely around four, but didn’t have a coach to representative the team at Sunday’s tournament meeting. “The meeting is mandatory and Stuttgart didn’t show up,” said Heber Post 64 Coach Bobby Brock. “Their coach said he didn’t know about the meeting. That hurts us too because we will have to play Stuttgart first if they beat Rose Bud. We like our chances but anything can happen in baseball.”
At last season’s zone tournament in Benton, Stuttgart came out of the losers’ bracket and defeated Post 64 twice for the championship and a spot in the state tournament. They have only met once this season when Heber blanked the Ricemen 3-0 at Stuttgart. The two rivals have a storied history over the past few seasons in high school conference play. Heber won the 2-4A Conference championship and 2-4A District this year while sweeping the Ricebirds but Stuttgart knocked off the Panthers in the regional tournament, which gave them a better seed at state.
If Stuttgart can get past Rose Bud on Friday, Heber will face the Ricemen at 8 p.m. on Saturday with a chance to clinch a spot in next week’s state tournament in Harrison. Heber receives a first-round bye because of its 11-0 regular season zone record and is the only team that can clinch a spot in state by placing second due to hosting the tournament.
Also on Saturday, the losers of the first two games will play at 3 p.m. and the winners are set for 5 p.m. Losers’ bracket games continue on Sunday at 1 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. before the winners’ bracket final starts around 6 p.m. The winners of Sunday’s two losers’ bracket games will play again at 8:30 p.m.
On Monday, the losers’ bracket final begins at 5 p.m. and the winner must turn around and play in the championship game at 8 p.m.
If the winner of the losers’ bracket defeats the winner of the winners’ bracket on Monday night, they will play again on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.
Brock likes his team’s chances of making state. “If we don’t make state it is going to be a big disappointment. Most of the coaches at the meeting agreed that we should win this zone tournament. We run-ruled seven of the nine zone games we played and Brinkley forfeited the other two.
But any of these teams can jump up and beat you so that’s why we play the game. Another big factor will be having all of our players show up.”
“That first game is huge because if we lose that we have to win six games for the championship,” added Brock.
Heber Springs, Ark. —
