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The Thompson Warriors clinched this season’s Class 7A, Area 5 Championship with a dominant 10-0 shutout victory against rival Hoover on Tuesday, April 18. (For the Reporter/Dawn Harrison)

By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Managing Editor

ALABASTER – In the second year under head coach Frankie Perez, the Thompson Warriors are area champs and they earned that title in dominant fashion on Tuesday, April 18 against the Hoover Buccaneers.

With a win guaranteed to seal the championship, Thompson left nothing to chance, dropping 10 runs in six innings and getting a shutout performance from Landon Alton on the mound to pick up a shortened 10-0 win that ended in six innings.

The Warriors outhit Hoover 11-1 in the victory, scoring two runs in each of the opening two innings, adding one more in the fourth, four more in the fifth and the final in the bottom of the sixth to complete the championship-clinching win.

With that, Thompson will now get to host a first-round playoff game after heartbreak the last couple of years, just missing out on the postseason.

The Warriors started fast in the victory, picking up a 1-2-3 inning in the field defensively in the top of the first before Drake McBride stepped to the plate and quickly gave the team a two-run cushion on a two-run bomb to center field that made it 2-0 through an inning of play.

An inning later, Thompson tacked on two more runs. The first came on an RBI triple from Braydon Smith, driving home Ben Pearman who got on base with a walk. Then, with two down, Ethan Crook drove home smith with an RBI single to left field that made it 4-0 in favor of the Warriors.

After a quiet third inning, Thompson added another run in the bottom of the fourth on an RBI single from Jacob Winton to make it 5-0.

Hoover, however, was able to get out of a jam in the inning with a double play to prevent further damage, as the Bucs tried to hang around.

But it was the fifth inning that made the ultimate difference.

Thompson started the inning with walks from Peryn Bland and McBride, which was followed by a two-RBI single from Tucker Arrington to make it 7-0.

Another single from Zach Wyatt and a walk to Wyatt Williams loaded the bases with no outs and set up a sac fly from Pearman.

Now 8-0, the Warriors added one final run in the inning on an RBI single from Smith to make it 9-0 through five innings of play. Hoover again got out of a bases-loaded jam with a double play, but the deficit became too much at that point.

The Bucs put two aboard in the top of the sixth, but Alton struck out the final batter of the inning to keep them out of the score column, while Thompson then stepped to the plate and ended the game with a 10th run off a bases-loaded RBI single from Wyatt.

McBride and Smith both finished 2-for-2 with two RBIs to play a major role in the championship win, while Wyatt added two hits and one RBI. Arrington added two RBIs on one hit, while Winton, Pearman and Crook each finished with a hit and an RBI in the victory. Peryn finished with one hit and two walks with three runs scored.

As for Alton, he picked up the complete-game win and allowed just one hit and one walk with no runs in a stellar shutout performance that also featured four strikeouts.

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