FORT SMITH -- Fort Smith Southside had to work a little extra on Friday night to cap off a final seven days of the regular season in grand fashion.
Luke Wyatt's towering 300-foot walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth inning secured a high seed for the Mavericks in the 6A-West with a 3-2 win over Springdale at Forsgren Field.
Southside (18-10, 7-7) earned at least the fourth seed in the Class 6A state tournament next week in Springdale. If Bentonville beats Bentonville West today in a makeup game, Southside will be the third seed and play Fort Smith Northside in the first round at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday. Bentonville West swept Southside in conference play and holds the tie-breaker edge.
On Friday, the Mavericks had to rally from two deficits to finally win in the ninth.
Tied at 2-2, Jackson Pruitt led off the home half of the ninth with a four-pitch walk.
After an out, Duncan Cravens singled sharply to right, sending Pruitt to third with Cravens advancing to second on the throw to third.
Wyatt, a senior who missed five weeks of the season due to an injury suffered on the spring break trip to Alabama, jumped all over the first pitch he saw and drilled it to the warning track in the left-center gap as Pruitt scored easily with the winning run.
"Throughout the game, I was putting balls into play pretty solidly," Wyatt said. "I felt like if I got another chance, I was going to put something in play and it just happened that runners were in scoring position and I put a good swing on the ball."
Wyatt was one of Southside's top hitters before the injury, hitting .394 and driving in 12 runs in the 14 games he played.
"Sitting in the dugout it was hard knowing that I could be out there helping the team," Wyatt said. "When I finally got back out here, it's like I never left. I just hopped right back in, and I'm back where I was."
Southside coach Dale Harpenau liked the situation with Wyatt at the plate.
"It's appropriate during the last regular season game that a senior is able to do that for us," Harpenau said. "Luke's battled through some injuries. He missed about five weeks. He's just now starting to get back. He's going to have an opportunity for us going forward now."
Springdale's Hayden Peters and Southside's Ty Jones dueled through five scoreless innings before both teams scored unearned runs in the sixth inning.
Caleb Horsey led off the eighth with a line-drive triple off the wall in right and scored on Peters' sacrifice fly for a 2-1 lead.
Jones singled with two outs to tie it in the bottom of the eighth to score Zeb Allen, who had walked and stole second advancing on to third on a wild pitch on the stolen base.
Braxton Waller threw a scoreless ninth for Southside in relief of Jones, yielding a pair of singles to lead off the inning but striking out the next two batters and getting a pop up to end the threat.
"The reason we won is we pitched it really well," Harpenau said. "Ty obviously gave us an opportunity to win the ball game, and Braxton came in the last inning. We had first and third with nobody on and pitched out of that, and found a way to walk it off in the bottom of the ninth."
The win capped a seven-day stretch for Southside that started with a win over rival Northside and then a close 2-0 win over Springdale on Tuesday.
"I tip my hat to Springdale," Harpenau said. "They've been competitive all year. Only two teams before today swept them and that was Har-Ber and Rogers. They played teams close all year."
The loss was a disappointing one for Springdale (14-11, 4-10), which battled to the end not only in the game but for the season.
"The pressure, you can see it on the kids sometimes," Springdale coach Tim Carver said. "A lot of time that's when the memories are made. Unfortunately, we're on the other side of it. We're going to find a way to make sure we're on the other side of it next year."