Trinity, PRP to collide in first-time all-Louisville showdown for state baseball title
Moments after he thought a called strike would end the game, Gray Davis watched Boyd County’s Caleb Gray put a ball into play — threatening to extend the contest and end his no-hit bid.
As Davis’ eyes followed a high-hopper he watched his third baseman, Grayson Willoughby, rush toward the middle of the infield, corral and deliver the tricky ball to first to propel Trinity to the championship round of the Clark’s Pump-N-Shop Baseball State Tournament at Kentucky Proud Park.
The Shamrocks (37-3) defeated the Lions 5-0 to make the finals for the first time since 2021, when they won their first title.
“It’s not the first no-hitter I’ve thrown, but this beats 8U baseball for sure,” Davis said with a grin.
Davis led off the final frame with a walk, just the third Boyd County runner to touch a bag Friday night. His bid for a perfect night died with a hit batter in the top of the fourth, and he allowed his first walk to lead off the fifth. The sophomore struck out six batters and finished with just 87 pitches thrown.
He was quick to credit the defenders like Willoughby, a junior who’s committed to the University of Kentucky, for their role in preserving the no-no.
“You can’t throw a no-hitter without zero errors, good defense behind you,” Gray said. “Even that last play, not a lot of teams got a guy charging as hard as he can. Thankfully, I’ve got an SEC third baseman.”
Davis is bound to be on big-time college radars this summer. He’s 22-0 as a starter for Trinity going back to his freshman season and had a 0.74 ERA on the year coming into the semifinals. He was able to throw three pitches — fast, curve, change-up — for strikes against the Lions.
What really separates Davis from the pack, said Trinity head coach Rick Arnold, is his level-headedness.
“It’s a credit to his parents, the way he was raised,” Arnold said. “He’s just really calm, he’s got a chill mentality but he can raise the bar when he needs to.”
That’s part of why Arnold trusts Davis to hit for himself in the lineup. He was 2-for-3 and drew a walk on Friday. He’s just shy of .400 on the season.
Willoughby was 2-for-4 with an RBI single in the first inning to get the scoring started. Harper Haywood (third inning) and Zach Floyd (fourth) also drove in runs for Trinity, which also scored on a passed ball in the third and a balk in the sixth.
Boyd County (31-6) kept the score from getting lopsided by stranding nine Shamrocks. It just couldn’t get past the pitcher’s mound most of the night.
“He had us hitting balls off the fist and hitting balls off the cap, working us in and out, changing speeds,” Boyd County head coach Frank Conley said. “Sometimes you run into guys like that. You tip your cap to him and get on with yourself. He pitched a heck of a game.”
The Lions, who graduated nine seniors from a 31-4 squad that got upset in last year’s 16th Region championship, weren’t picked by many to regroup as well as they did in 2025. Conley saw what others didn’t in a unit that this year fielded just three seniors.
“I thought we had a good bunch of gritty kids that were just waiting on their turn to play,” Conley said. “And they kind of proved a lot of people wrong. They play with that chip on their shoulder. ‘We’re gonna show you that we can do this,’ and that’s a powerful thing when you get somebody doing that.”
Trinity won its 21st straight since a loss in late April to St. Xavier, whom the Shamrocks defeated in the 7th Region finals. Those teams were ranked 1-2 for the majority of the spring, so Trinity entered as a gaudy favorite in this year’s tournament.
It so far has lived up the billing: The Shamrocks have outscored their three opponents 23-4 and allowed 10 hits without committing an error. Of those hits, nine came off the bats of Taylor County in a 6-2 quarterfinal victory last weekend.
Friday’s game started an hour and 25 minutes later than scheduled due to lightning and rain. Trinity was unfazed.
“When you’re sitting down on concrete for an hour you kind of lose focus a little bit but I figured out how to lock back in and get it done,” Davis said.
All-Louisville championship
A rematch of last year’s state final between Pleasure Ridge Park and McCracken County in the later semifinal yielded a repeat result: Panthers over Mustangs.
PRP won 4-0 behind a complete game from Joey Dudeck, who fanned five on 90 pitches. He allowed only two hits while issuing four walks.
The Panthers (29-6) led 2-0 without a hit before McCracken (31-9) took its first at-bat. Kobie Howard walked to lead off the inning and advanced to third on a passed ball. He soon after scored on a throwing error by Mustangs pitcher Joshua Penrod, who later threw a wild pitch that allowed Brayden Bruner to plate. PRP added two more late in the sixth, one stemming from another throwing error (catcher Kendrick Dunning).
Noah Godwin entered to relieve Penrod, who’d thrown 103 pitches, in the seventh.
“That’s the way that we just get down, that’s how we play all over here,” PRP senior Deuce Harris said. “ … We just grinded (Penrod) out, and once we got the bust-the-game moment, we busted it open and did what we had to do.”
The teams combined to go 5-for-44 (.113) at the plate. Harris had the game’s only RBI in the sixth inning, scoring Logan Strong on a two-out single.
PRP’s win set up a first for the state tournament: a winner-take-all battle between two teams from Louisville. The same pairing squared off in the 2024 semifinals, where PRP defeated the Shamrocks 7-6 before winning its seventh state championship.
They haven’t met this season.
“Trinity’s the best team in the state,” PRP head coach Brad Burns said. “We’ve got our hands full and hopefully we come out and can play a little bit. We’ll see what happens.”