Tennessee
Unheralded, Veteran Vols Propel Tennessee Baseball To Latest Regional Win | Rocky Top Insider
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The 2024 Tennessee baseball team has stars galore in its lineup including five players with 17-plus home runs this season. Despite an unconventional approach to the pitching staff, the Vols have a handful of highly effective pitchers that could be early draft picks.
But it was the unheralded and oft-maligned veterans that made Tennessee’s sweep through the Knoxville Regional and its 12-3 victory over Southern Miss on Sunday night look as easy as it was.
Zander Sechrist was a career midweek pitcher entering this season and even when he opened the year as a weekend starter for Tennessee, there was a prevailing thought that he was a place holder before younger, more talented arms developed into the role. While Sechrist isn’t one of Tennessee’s three most effective pitchers in its peculiar pitching structure, he’s undoubtedly a reliable and effective left-handed arm in pitching coach Frank Anderson’s arsenal.
The quirky senior proved he’s a team favorite because of his extreme toughness and competitiveness in addition to his light hearted humor against the Golden Eagles. Sechrist spent minutes on the ground when a 105 MPH Davis Gillespie liner struck him on the outside of his left knee to lead off the fourth inning.
The senior not only stayed in the game but worked out of the inning unscathed. Sechrist allowed three unearned runs on an evening his defense did him few favors but his 4.2 inning outing once against put Tennessee in a solid spot.
“I think it just shows what type of teammate he is. He’s a tough guy,” catcher Cal Stark said. “He’s going to go out there and compete. You know whenever something like that doesn’t go his way, he’s going to have everyone one of our backs.”
“He’s a tough kid in his own way,” Tennessee coach Tony Vitello said. “He’s the definition of a quirky lefty, a lovable kid and a great teammate. Somehow, it’s kind of odd how he gets out there and is as much of a competitor as Hunter Ensley and Cal Stark.”
Few Tennessee players have faced more criticism than Stark in recent years. The Vols’ backstop continued his bounce back season with one of his best weekends at the plate, reaching base in seven-of-14 plate appearances and hitting three home runs over the weekend.
More From RTI: Everything Tony Vitello Said After Tennessee Won The Knoxville Regional
His fifth inning solo shot gave Tennessee the lead against Southern Miss and his three-run ninth inning shot was the exclamation point on a once tight game that had turned into a route.
“We could dissect why he’s gotten better offensively or why he’s gotten better over the course of four years, but I think they all fall under the umbrella of he meets challenges head on,” Vitello said.
The disdain Tennessee center fielder Hunter Ensley faced as recently as a month ago was more ridiculous than any others faced. One of the Vols’ top hitters on a College World Series team a season ago, Ensley struggled at the plate for much of the season while playing stout defense in center field.
Ensley was hitting .238 entering Tennessee’s series final at Florida on May 3. In 17 games since then, he’s hitting .393 with a .534 on-base percentage, three home runs, seven doubles and 18 RBIs.
“I’m as much for competition as anybody, but when you do have experience and we know truly what you can do in games, it does give you an edge,” Vitello said on his trust in Ensley. “Based off what he did for us last year in so many different situations, you can’t erase that. … We kind of pay attention to certain things that are just always there. Whether it be taking charge in the outfield, being able to be one of the better center fielders in the country, defensively, being an aggressive and really good baserunner and being a fighter at the plate.”
The redshirt junior center fielder is now hitting .285 on the season after recording five hits and reaching base nine times over the weekend.
Tennessee’s does have and has had plenty of elite talents under Vitello. Those guys are a big reason why Tennessee is back in the super regionals for a fourth straight season. But whether it be Will Heflin and Pete Derkay or Sechrist, Stark and Ensley— unheralded veterans always find a way to make a major impact on Vitello’s squads.
The trio of seniors are playing their best baseball of the season for Tennessee right now and that’s just making the top-seeded Vols look all the scarier. Their performances made a regional a drama free weekend, something you don’t often see.
Former Tennessee baseball pitcher Garrett Stallings was called up by the Milwaukee Brewers on June 30.
Stallings, 28, likely will make his major league debut against the Cincinnati Reds on June 30 in the second game of the Brewers’ four-game homestand.
Stallings played at Tennessee from 2017 to 2019 in the early years of Tony Vitello’s stint at the Vols’ head coach. He earned a starting role as a freshman and became the ace by his junior season.
In 2019, the Los Angeles Angels selected Stallings in the fifth round of the MLB draft. He bounced around in the minors before landing firmly in Triple-A with the Norfolk Tides, and later the Brewers’ affiliate Nashville Sounds, in 2024.
Stallings posted a 3-3 record with the Sounds in 2026 with a 3.45 ERA and 59 strikeouts in 62⅔ innings.
He will be the 54th player in Tennessee history to reach the major leagues and the 12th since 2020. He will join left-hander Garrett Crochet (2020); right-hander Ben Joyce (2023); infielder Andre Lipcius (2023); IF Trey Lipscomb (2024); outfielder Jordan Beck (2024); RHP Seth Halvorsen (2024); RHP Chase Dollander (2025); RHP Blade Tidwell (2025); INF Christian Moore (2025); OF Drew Gilbert (2025); and RHP Chad Dallas (2026).
Dallas made his debut for the Toronto Blue Jays on June 4.
Wynton Jackson covers high school sports for Knox News. Email: wynton.jackson@knoxnews.com
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BELL BUCKLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The poet laureate of Tennessee has just died. Margaret Britton Vaughn was 87-years-old. Friends knew Vaughn as hilarious, talented, and deeply unique.
Visiting Bell Buckle, Tennessee over the years, I’ve just found this little place has so many artists. A proud addition to that is Vaughn.
“When Maggi was your friend, you knew you had a friend,” said longtime friend Annie Rooney. “It wasn’t if you’re rich or poor or have four matching tires on your car, she was your friend.”
Going way back, Vaughn was a songwriter for some country greats.
“Loretta Lynn, yes!” said friend Carla Webb.
To understand the uniqueness of Vaughn, listen to this story.
“Maggi says, ‘honey, you wanna go to the movies with me?’” friend Billy Phillips remembered.
Phillips was nine when he and Vaughn became friends and took a trip to the Carpi Theatre in Shelbyville.
“When I get into the car, there were 200 empty boxes of chocolate bunny rabbits!” Phillips laughed.
“She loved chocolate,” Rooney agreed.
“It couldn’t be hollow milk chocolate,” Phillips continued. “It had to be solid milk chocolate.”
That was just one of many loves. One of the times I got to talk to Vaughn was in 2023. She was selling eclectic things she’d collected. They included a typewriter built out of clothes hangers and a lamp made of forks and spoons.
“Maggi had a lot of stuff!” Phillips said.
She’d call around to antique shops.
“Got anything that looks like me, honey?” Rooney laughed, remembering Vaughn’s calls.
Talking to Vaughn, you came to understand something. She had a deep appreciation for the art and the artist who made it. That’s something that sprang from Vaughn being an artist herself.
“My mother looked down and said, ‘are you sure you don’t want to be a nurse?’” Vaughn told me in 2023. “I said, ‘no, momma. I wanna be a songwriter and a poet.’ People say, ‘Maggi, these books. You’ve written my life.’”
“Maggi had front porch books, not coffee table books,” Webb said.
“She was a poet of the people,” Rooney continued.
Vaughn took on prejudice in her work. She also wrote about all things she loved.
“She covered rural life, southern things,” Phillips said.
That writing carried her to become the poet laureate of Tennessee in 1995. The next year, she wrote Tennessee’s bicentennial poem.
“I gave her her last kiss the other day,” Webb said.
“I’m on the verge of tears,” Phillips added. “This will be a real gut punch.”
Asking around town, people seemed to agree on their favorite of Vaughn’s works.
“Is That You Mama?” Phillips said, naming one of Vaughn’s poems.
Webb read me an excerpt of the poem. It ended with these lines;
“Well, mama, I’m okay now. You tell the Lord I said hi. Was that you, mama, that just kissed me bye?”
“Maggi was a true original, and Bell Buckle was proud to call her our own,” Phillips said.
Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.
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