Silverdale Baptist Academy's Kaili Phillips, a University of Tennessee signee, likely hasn't seen a whole lot of good pitches this high school softball season. She didn't see a whole lot of good ones Thursday.
But that didn't stop the Lady Seahawks' leadoff batter from going 3-for-3 with two of their four home runs and helping SBA defeat Chattanooga Christian School 10-0 in five innings in a Division II-A East District 2 game at Silverdale.
SBA (18-5, 5-0) has the inside track to be the top-seeded team in the district tournament, which is scheduled to start with a play-in game next Thursday. However, because of bad weather earlier in the season, the Lady Seahawks still have three district games remaining.
The first is scheduled Monday at SBA against Notre Dame. CCS also has its last district game scheduled that day at Boyd-Buchanan. But the National Weather Service is forecasting a 70 percent chance of rain Monday tapering to a 30 percent chance Tuesday night, when the Lady Seahawks are scheduled to host Grace Academy, its opponent in an away game Wednesday.
"Our district meeting is Wednesday," said CCS coach Lisa Gray, whose team is hosting the district tournament. "We may have to move some things around. Just as long as we have four teams to take to regionals May 4th, we're good."
Phillips began the bottom of the first by extending her bat across the plate and mashing an outside pitch over the fence in right-center field. Savannah Turner then made it back-to-back homers before Maddie Tankersley took advantage of a dropped foul popup with two outs and singled in an unearned run to make it 3-0.
"It was big getting some offense early because they are a good team," Lady Seahawks coach Tim Couch said after his team handed CCS (13-10, 5-2) its second league loss. "I told the girls, 'Don't expect to see the same team we saw a month ago.'"
Phillips' second shot out of the park came with one on in the fourth - and on a pitch even farther away from her than the first one.
"It was the same pitch but more low and outside," said Phillips, who also had a stolen base and scored four runs. "Teams have been pitching me there a lot. At practice, I've been working with Coach on that very pitch."
Meanwhile, Tankersley was busy shutting down the Lady Chargers' offense for a second time this year. She totaled nine strikeouts, and the only trouble she encountered was allowing consecutive walks to start the second inning, prompting a visit from Couch.
"I said, 'Hey, you OK?,'" Couch said. "She said, 'I'll get it fixed.'"
Couch said Silverdale will credit Tankersley with a no-hitter, although Lauren Kay's one-out pop fly in the fifth fell untouched between three defenders, all of whom stopped running and looked at each other in shallow center. The coach believed that with normal effort, it should have been a routine catch.
"They've got a great-hitting team, and they attack as hitters. But I think the biggest thing for us is we've got to find a way to attack her, and not doing that keeps momentum on their side," Gray said. "It's a momentum game in my opinion. They feed off each other. We've got to find ways to get it going, and we've got to get it going next week."
Marlee Montgomery went 2-for-2 and scored twice for SBA. Skylar Sheridan and McCade Cooper each went 2-for-3, with Sheridan homering, driving in two runs and scoring two, and Cooper contributing an RBI.
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him on Twitter @KelleySmiddie.