PADUCAH —At a seemingly insurmountable 33-0 in Kentucky Region 1 Baseball Championship games coming into Monday afternoon, McCracken County was as much of a postseason juggernaut as the area has ever seen.
Only one time in the school’s 12-year history had the Mustangs won a game in the tournament by one run. Only four times could teams stay within two runs.
Murray High gave it a big effort to end the streak on the Mustangs’ home turf at Edward Jones Field in Monday’s opener of the 2026 tournament, behind near-dominant pitching from senior Avery Starks and good defense. Once again, though, McCracken slipped away to a 2-0 win that ended the Tigers’ season at 22-10.
“What an effort,” said an emotional, eighth-year Head Coach Sam Rushing. “We did so many things well. Obviously, they’re the team (29-8 this season). They’ve won this thing 11 times in-a-row for a reason.
We talked about it a lot going into the game, we didn’t care about the draw; there was no control over that. We talked about how special it would be to come here and end that streak for them, to just show up and play.
“We left guys in scoring position and left things out there on the field, opportunities that didn’t go our way, but the guys battled and did a great job.”
After four scoreless innings, McCracken found the scoring column in the bottom of the fifth on Kendrick Dunning’s RBI hit through the left side for a 1-0 lead. Starks (complete game, giving up two earned runs and six hits with five strikeouts and five walks) did end the threat with no further damage.
Murray High then stranded two runners in the top of the sixth and back-to-back doubles by McCracken’s Brady Thompson and Caden Kern gave the Mustangs a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the inning.
See a more complete story in Wednesday’s Ledger & Times