Huntland's Lily Jackson swings at an incoming pitch during a game Wednesday at Eagleville High School. Jackson had two hits, including a home run, and an RBI in the 16-4 loss.
Huntland's Lily Jackson swings at an incoming pitch during a game Wednesday at Eagleville High School. Jackson had two hits, including a home run, and an RBI in the 16-4 loss.
The Huntland High School Lady Hornets lost to the Eagleville Lady Eagles 16-4 on the road Wednesday in the Region 5A championship game.
High-scoring frames from Eagleville in the second and third innings put the game out of reach for the Lady Hornets early as they finished as the runners-up for the region.
Huntland head softball coach Michael Tipps said that multiple two-out errors in the bottom of the second put the Lady Hornets at a big disadvantage on the scoreboard that they weren’t able to fully recover from.
“When you play teams as good as (the Lady Eagles) are, you cannot make mistakes in the field. One or two little mistakes led to one big inning that put us in a real bad hole, and we just couldn’t climb out of it,” he said before referring to his team needing to move on from the loss quickly with a sub-state game on the horizon. “These types of games, you just have to flush it and be ready to go again.”
The Lady Eagles were the first team on the scoreboard with a two-run home run and an RBI double in the bottom of the first putting Huntland behind 3-0 early.
The Lady Hornets got one of those runs back in the top of the second with Lily Jackson hitting a solo home run to left field to put the score at 3-1.
However, the Lady Eagles batted around in the bottom of the second and scored seven runs in the frame with a grand slam and a solo home run in consecutive at-bats doing a majority of the damage to make it a 10-1 game. All of the scoring for the bottom of the second came with two outs in the inning.
The Lady Hornets loaded the bases to start the top of the third on consecutive singles from Bailey Morris, Bella Smith and Hadley Gardner with an RBI fielder’s choice from Jocy May and an RBI groundout from Camerin Davis bringing the deficit down to 10-3.
The Lady Eagles went on to score six more runs in the bottom of the third to push their lead up to double digits at 16-3.
With two outs in the top of the fourth, Morris, Smith, Gardner and May hit singles in quick succession with May’s hit driving Morris home to cut away a small portion of the deficit.
However, the Lady Hornets weren’t able to make up any more ground before the mercy rule was triggered in the fifth inning as they lost by 12.
Kinah Mason pitched the first two innings for the Lady Hornets with one strikeout, nine hits, one walk, three earned runs and seven unearned runs allowed.
Morris pitched one inning in relief with four hits, three walks and six runs allowed, and Smith pitched one scoreless inning with one hit allowed and one walk issued.
With the loss, the Lady Hornets moved to 12-9 on the season.
They will next play Saturday at Wayne County High School in a sub-state game. First pitch is scheduled for 3 p.m.
