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Flower Mound’s state title reinforces the Dallas area’s hold on 6A baseball in Texas

Teams from the Dallas area have won five straight UIL 6A state baseball championships, and six of eight since the classification was introduced in 2015.

The text messages rolled in from some of Danny Wallace’s coaching contemporaries before his Flower Mound baseball team left North Texas for the UIL baseball state tournament in Round Rock.

“Make sure it comes back,” the messages read.

It, being the UIL 6A baseball state championship trophy, is coming back to North Texas. Flower Mound beat Pearland 6-4 in the title game on Saturday to win its second state championship and first since 2014. And to call the region a second home for the trophy may now qualify as an understatement.

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“It’s a pride thing now,” Wallace said.

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For good reasons, too. Dallas-area baseball teams have won five straight UIL 6A baseball state championships and six of the eight that have been played since the classification was added in 2015. Flower Mound’s win on Saturday followed Southlake Carroll (2018, 2019, 2022) and Rockwall-Heath (2021). Jesuit won in 2016. Cypress Ranch (2015) and Deer Park (2017) are the only out-of-area teams to have won in Texas’ largest classification. Eight total Dallas-area teams have played in a 6A state championship game; 12 total have qualified for the state tournament.

“Dallas has the best baseball in the whole state,” Flower Mound junior Adrian Rodriguez said. “What else can I say?”

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Here’s another way to say it: Even in a state tournament in which Flower Mound, by judgment of the state’s baseball coaches, was an underdog, it still won. Pearland was ranked No. 1 in the Texas High School Baseball Association’s statewide 6A poll; Cypress Woods — which Flower Mound beat in Friday’s state semifinal — was ranked second. Austin Westlake, ranked third, lost to Pearland in the other state semifinal.

Flower Mound was unranked. It didn’t even fall under the “receiving votes” category.

A disclaimer: Rankings do not always paint the most accurate picture. But even in a season in which the Dallas area might not have been favored to win a state championship, it still did.

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Flower Mound Sam Erickson, (21), celebrates with Zane Becker, (17), and teammates after...
Flower Mound Sam Erickson, (21), celebrates with Zane Becker, (17), and teammates after hitting two-run home run against Pearland during the sixth inning of the 2023 UIL State 6A Baseball final held Saturday, June, 10, 2023, in Round Rock, Texas. Flower Mound defeated Pearland 6-4. (Rodolfo Gonzalez / Special Contributor) (Rodolfo Gonzalez / RODOLFO GONZALEZ)

“When I saw this gauntlet of a tournament that we were going to have to play, talking to some of my buddies, I was like ‘Man, that is an unbelievable couple of teams we’re going to have to beat,’ “ Wallace said.

“Every one of them was like, ‘Coach, you’ve already won Region I. It ain’t going to be any tougher than what you’ve just did.’ ”

This isn’t to say Flower Mound’s state tournament run was easy. Woods rallied from a five-run deficit to cut Flower Mound’s lead to just two in the fifth inning of Friday’s state semifinal. Pearland brought the go-ahead run to the plate in the bottom of the seventh inning of Saturday’s state championship. The margin between a gold medal and a silver or bronze one is as thin as the ribbon each hangs on.

The road that Flower Mound — and Southlake Carroll and Jesuit before it — took to state, Wallace and his players say, prepared it to handle that margin.

“Region I,” Wallace said. “is the best region is the state of Texas,”

Region I includes schools from El Paso and Midland and stretches through Fort Worth and down to Arlington. More often than not, it’s produced the 6A state champion; five of the eight teams to have won a 6A title have come from Region I, and each has been from the Dallas area. Heath (Region II) is the only Dallas-area 6A champion to have come from a different quadrant, and it had to beat Keller (Region I) in that year’s title game.

Flower Mound beat Denton Guyer in the 6A Region I finals, Weatherford in the semifinals and Allen in the quarterfinals. That doesn’t include its regular-season schedule which featured District 6-6A rivals Hebron (No. 4 in the THSBCA poll), Flower Mound Marcus (24-9-1) and Coppell, a 30-game winner three times since 2016.

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A brief run through that list of team shows top-end talent. Guyer featured Brad Pruett, an Oklahoma-bound two-way star; Allen freshman Chandler Hart, a lefthander, throws 90 mile per hour pitches with ease. Marcus has been one of the state’s best teams for the last decade and has one of the nation’s top high school draft prospects in Texas A&M pledge Caden Sorrell; Hebron was so deep that it had players committed to Power Five programs on its bench.

“We have a ton of competition,” Flower Mound junior Sam Erickson said. “In district, even, we were facing 90 [mile per hour pitches] every week. We’re ready. Once we get out of the area, we’ve already faced 90 for weeks on weeks on weeks. By the time we get here and we’re facing 90 again, it’s just another day.”

Another day, another championship for Dallas-Fort Worth.

Dallas-area dominance in 6A

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Since the UIL installed the 6A classification ahead of the 2015 baseball season, teams from Dallas-Fort Worth have cleaned up:

Year6A state champion6A runner up
2023Flower MoundPearland
2022Southlake CarrollSan Antonio Reagan
2021Rockwall-HeathKeller
2020No tournament (COVID-19)No tournament (COVID-19)
2019Southlake CarrollFort Bend Ridge Point
2018Southlake CarrollSan Antonio Reagan
2017Deer ParkSan Antonio Reagan
2016JesuitSan Antonio Johnson
2015Cypress RanchArlington Martin

On Twitter: @McFarland_Shawn

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