ORANGE PARK - St. Johns Country Day School baseball coach Tom Lucas stated the obvious big answer about his team making it to the FHSAA Final Four again, but, now in Class 1A, the faces are eerily familiar.
"We've been to four Final Fours in the last five years," said Lucas, after the Spartans took a dramatic, as usual, walk off region 1-1A championship win from University Christian to win the 8-7 title, 2-0 in the best of three series. "We have had to attack the game a little different from past years as the team has had to execute game plans and take games piece by piece. We used to win games with big hits at the end, but this team is built different."

In the Class 1A Final Four, St. Johns, the top seed at 25-8, will take on No. 4 Brito (16-13, 7 state titles, last two 2014, 2015)) at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 14 with No. 2 Canterbury (24-11, 3 state titles 2016-2018) playing No. 3 Orangewood Christian (21-10) at 7 p.m. The Class 1A championship game is Thursday, May 15 at 7 p.m.; all games at Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers (14100 6 Mile Cypress Pkwy, about 5 hours south).
In true championship form, the St. Johns Country Day School baseball team, the defending Class 2A champion, proved their mettle with a scintillating finish in nine innings with a walk off single in the bottom of the ninth inning by Nick Bowden and a head-first diving slide into home plate that barely evaded the catchers glove by Preston Cole as the Spartans won 8-7 over University Christian in the region 1-1A championship series game two to wrap up a fourth Final Four trip in the last five years for the Spartans and coach Tom Lucas.
"When we were down 7-2 in the fifth inning, I told them to remember that St. Johns is the defending champion and this is what we are made for," said a physically spent Lucas after his team battled back from the 7-2 deficit that came via three home runs by University Christian. "We knew they could hit the ball and we knew we had to answer. This team never quit."
The coincidence of the season, with Lucas winning the first-ever state title for Clay County baseball last year in Class 2A last year, is just that Class 2A is where the Spartans have dominated to get to those Final Fours.


"We were hitting the ball hard and getting it into the outfield and just not getting enough on it to clear the fences," said centerfielder T.J. Sunderhaus, who set the career hits mark for St. Johns during the region final series. "This is a different team than last year's because we don't have the same power as last year's bats so we have to hit hard line drives get on base and move people on the bases."
Now, the Spartans are in Class 1A with what looks like the same faces.
After a final season in Class 3A in 2019, when St. Johns finished as a region semifinalist after an 11-1 loss to North Florida Christian, the first familiar name, the Spartans, and the United States, had a brief time out for COVID 19.
"The coach at North Florida Christian, Mike Posey (4 state titles; 5 runnerups, 1 national title) and I first had a somewhat adversarial relationship and he beat us a bunch of times in the region final, but when we beat them and won the state title, he texted me with a welcome to the club," said Lucas. "I think that was a turning point not only for the team, but for me personally as a coach because I saw up close how he got his team prepared to play to the weaknesses of the opposing team. He was a pitching guy and he would figure out what a team could hit and not hit. That may have been the biggest thing I have learned from him; intense preparations."


After the COVID season, Lucas gassed up the engine and started his reign of north Florida baseball with a combination of strong pitching, strong hitting and a little late inning luck.
In 2021, the Spartans grabbed a 4-0 win over North Florida Christian in the region final to advance to the first Final Four. A 3-2 win over Mount Dora Christian, another familiar name for 2025, got the Spartans to the Class 2A championship against newcomer Out-of-Door Academy who snuck by with a 5-3 win off their own late inning theatrics.
"Each time we would get to a point, we learned a little bit more about ourselves," said Lucas."It's an evolving mass of teenage boys in a very intense sport. Each team is different so each year, each team learns different things to be successful."
In 2022, again in Class 2A, Lucas got knocked out of Final Four contention by those pesky North Florida Christian boys with a 4-1 region final loss with NFC losing in the Class 2A final to Miami Christian Academy, a third familiar name, 4-1.
In 2023, also in Class 2A, Lucas got into the Final Four with a 10-5 win in the region final over those dang boys from North Florida Christian only to lose in the state final to Lakeland Christian 5-2. St. Johns beat Westminister Academy 5-3 to get to the final.
A four-run outburst in the first inning was all the offense the Lakeland Christian Vikings needed to take down the St. John’s Country Day Spartans, 5-2, in the FHSAA Class 2A State Championship Game.
Lakeland Christian would beat Neumann 3-0 in that state semifinal. Remember those Neumann guys because Lucas had them on the 2025 schedule to the tune of a 9-2 win in March.
"This year, Neumann pushed us out of the number one spot after we had lost three games to three state ranked teams and then got beat bad against Columbia Lake City (11-3) in probably our worst game, but then Neumann was coming to us," said Lucas. "We beat them pretty good and that win kind of woke us up to the fact that we can't take any teams lightly. We are everyone's Super Bowl and will always get their best games."
In 2024, still in Class 2A, was the big year for the Spartans with another region title win over NFC, 8-6, that got the Spartans to the Final Four where St. Johns beat Northside Christian 5-4 to get to the championship game. Remember Miami Christian? St. Johns faced them and won on a walk off hit for a 4-3 Class 2A title.


Clay Today's sports pages reported the game:
In probably the most unusual finish of a state championship baseball game, St. Johns Country Day School was able to overcome a 3-3 seventh-inning tie with a chronology of opportunistic plays to steal away a 4-3 Class 2A championship over five-time champion Miami Christian Academy in Ft. Myers on May 22.
St. Johns Country Day School senior Kody Denault, who said his Spartans were going to win the fateful title game, watched in disbelief as the title came the way it did.
"I was in shock when it happened and kind of froze in the dugout," said Denault, noting Gilliand's third strike run to first that got an error and the game winning run for St. Johns from Connor O'Steen. "Then we ran out and chased down Gibby (Gabriel Gilliand)."
The title was the first-ever state baseball title for St. Johns Country Day and Clay County.