Houston County searching for internal motivation, plods by Northside to finish region sweep

WARNER ROBINS — A win is a win, that’s for certain, but the process isn’t created the same.

Houston County (10-2, 3-0 Region 2-5A) finished their region sweep of Northside (9-5, 0-3 Region) with 12-1 and 5-1 finals, but they weren’t particularly pretty.

The Bears struggled to produce consistent offense unaided by defensive mistakes. They were slow-moving in Game 2 until the wheels fell off of the Eagles’ defense, which let up three walks and two errors.

By Game 3 Bears head coach Matt Hopkins was audibly frustrated with his team, who aside from a three-run fourth, again fell into the same mistakes.

Finding internal motivation and getting up for every game is not a battle exclusive to this season, but they don’t have as much established talent to lean on as in previous years.

“We’re not doing a good job of finding energy. I think a lot of our guys are so focused on the failure,” Hopkins said. “We want to force failure but we’re not handling it very well. So we’re getting a lot of selfishness within the team. Not that they’re not good kids, it’s just most kids don’t know how to handle failure.”

“Right now we’ve got some guys that are failing and they’re not doing a good job of being a team guy…I think we’re depending too much on big games to make us be motivated, when they should just want to play the baseball game that comes up.”

That doesn’t mean the night, and the series, was without praise-worthy performances.

Freshman Kaiden Harvey is emerging as a contributor at the leadoff spot, not to mention he made some good defensive plays at both third base and (briefly) at shortstop.

Harvey was 3-of-6 at the plate and scored four runs on the day; just getting on as much as he did is important ahead of Isaiah Galason, which Hopkins noted after the game.

“We tried to let him be at the bottom of the lineup and get comfortable for a while, now that he’s starting to get more at-bats, we’re trying to find somebody that can set the table at the top,” Hopkins said. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to have people on base when Isaiah Galason gets to the plate. So we’re trying to rearrange our lineup a little bit. And I liked how our lineup was configured tonight, we just got to do a better job of executing in our positions and our spots.

“I thought he did a really good job of starting the game off. He’s going up there and competing,” Hopkins continued. “[In] both games I think he was on to start the game. Anytime you can get a leadoff that’s going to compete, do a good job, I’ll take it.”

HoCo’s defense was shaken up quite a bit over the offseason, and about 12 games in players are starting to settle in to their new positions.

Peyton Nauss made some great plays at second base in Game 2, fielding tough balls and getting throws to first on time. Harvey played third for most of the two games, and he’s certainly got the arm for it.

But a pleasant surprise for Hopkins is the pitching staff, which had the most turnover of any group.

Harvey had eight strikeouts on Tuesday, Tyson Ganas had seven in Game 3 and Ryan Maxwell, Owen Mauney, Ethan Kenney, Michael Lyons and Isaiah Galason all had some solid innings to contribute, too.

Pitching that many different players in one week is not something you’d see the 2025 Bears do, but they’re competing with what they have through a dozen contests.

“Our biggest strength, and it’s been a really pleasant surprise, is I feel like our pitchers have done a good job at competing,” Hopkins said. “We’ve been throwing a lot of guys, and they’re finding ways to get outs.”

“I think defensively, we’re getting better, and I’m happy with that. We’ve got a lot of guys in new positions and I think that we’re improving every game, which is what you want to see. It’s becoming more of a strength,” Hopkins said.

UP NEXT

HoCo’s next region series will stay in the county, with Veterans up on deck next week. The first game will be at home on March 10, with the doubleheader happening over at the ‘Hawks Nest on March 13.

Northside will play a non-region game at Westside-Macon on March 9 before hosting Lee County on March 10 to start that region series.