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Four Vermilion teams make baseball playoffs

The state baseball playoff brackets for Classes 3A-C were released Tuesday and four local teams earned berths in the playoffs.
North Vermilion, Vermilion Catholic, Erath and Delcambre all earned a spot in the postseason to begin their quests to Sulphur for a state championship.
The Patriots earned the highest seed of the local teams, earning a No. 10 rank and a first-round matchup against No. 23 Union Parish. North Vermilion finished the year with a 22-5 record and sole possession of the District 6-3A title.
Union Parish comes into the game with an 18-8 regular season record and the Fightin’ Farmers were the champions of District 2-3A.
Also in the 3A bracket, the No. 16 Erath Bobcats will host No. 17 Buckeye in a matchup between two teams that each won 17 games in the regular season.
In a game between two teams close in seeding, it is an advantage to play at home, according to Erath head coach David Jordan.
“Anytime you’re in the middle of the pack, it’s an advantage to be at home,” Jordan said. “It’s less travel and travel is always tough on kids. I think anytime you’re playing a 17 seed in the first round, you’d rather be at home.”
The Bobcats came within a game of becoming co-champions of the district with North Vermilion. The game between Erath and Buckeye is scheduled for Thursday at 6 p.m. in Erath.
In Class 2A, the Delcambre Panthers finished with a 13-9 regular season record and a No. 24 seed. They will be on the road to face district opponent Opelousas Catholic. The Panthers faltered near the end of the season after starting out 12-5.
The team lost four of its last five games to drop into the bottom portion of the bracket. However, Delcambre head coach Chad Hayes said he believes the matchup has its bright side.
“We know what they’ve got and they know what we got,” he said. “They (Opelousas Catholic) can hit the ball. It’s the same thing I’ve said all year. If we can hit the ball, our pitchers throw strikes and we keep the errors to a minimum, we’ll be OK.”
Despite ending up at 24, Hayes said he knows his team is better than its seeding.
“I figured we would end up where we did,” he said. “I know our team has the potential to be better than a No. 24 seed, but that’s where we ended up because of our mistakes.”
Rounding out the area teams, Vermilion Catholic is a No. 13 seed in Class A and will host No. 20 East Beauregard in the first round.
“We kind of seen it coming because of all of the unofficial stuff,” said VC head coach Steven Adams Jr. “We’re excited that we have a home game. We’re going to play somebody that we don’t know anything about. I feel like our kids do a much better job of dealing with the unknown. We’ve played teams during the season that we didn’t know anything about and we’ve done well.”
The Eagles have just as many wins as the Trojans, but it was the rigorous schedule that propelled Adams’ team above some of the other squads in the bracket with more wins. Adams said the tough schedule has paid off in more ways than one for his young team.
“We made our schedule two years ago and we’ve been to some pretty tough tournaments,” Adams said. “Last year’s team handled a lot of that early. This year, we have a fairly young team with a lot of sophomores playing in very important spots. We’re making mistakes that young teams make. We got beat up early; towards the end of the season, we started to see some guys mature and handle some of the failures. Our guys are starting to figure it out and play well.”
The dates of the North Vermilion, Delcambre and Vermilion Catholic games will be later this week.

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