On April 24 North Augusta softball beat Midland Valley to lock down third place in the region and a chance to start the postseason at home.
But on May 6, the Mustangs got their revenge with a 16-7 win over the Jackets in game one of the Class AAAA playoffs. Midland Valley head coach Katie Anderson said it helped that both teams were so familiar with each other coming into the matchup.
“They're a great team,” she said. “I mean, playing them three times now and possibly another time, it's just, you're either going to be on, you're going to be off, but you’ve got to have each other's back. Somebody's got to pick somebody else up. So I think it's just a big team thing that we've got to stay together, fight together and just do those little things.”
While both teams were expecting to face teams outside of the region after a long regular season, they embraced the challenge of facing each other again.
For North Augusta head coach Lindsey Jones, she didn’t want the girls treating this like just another rivalry game. The playoffs represent a brand new season for many teams and that’s exactly the mindset the Jackets had going into game one.
“This is just a playoff game against a playoff-caliber team,” she said. “So we didn't want all the hype behind it of a rival game. We need to just come in here and play our playoff ball, which ultimately, aside from in the circle, getting seven runs is pretty good. They just came out swinging today and getting, I think 15 earned runs is incredible. So they were a tough, tough competitor today.”
For the first three innings, it was all North Augusta as it put up three runs to take an early 3-1 lead. The Jackets had an opportunity to take a firmer lead at the bottom of the third with the bases loaded but Midland Valley’s Larue Hicks locked in to get out of the jam. Then the dam broke open for the Mustangs.
They strung together hit after hit to move runners around the bases, adding eight runs to the scoreboard in just the fourth inning. The Jackets struggled to stop the bleeding once they picked up momentum at the plate.
“We didn't score the first couple innings,” Anderson said. “We were putting the ball in play hard, that’s what. I told them that, that was my message. Like, keep swinging, keep putting the ball in play and they're going to fall. So that's what they did. They just kept that mentality. They stayed through the ball, they barrelled up the ball, and then they executed.”
It didn’t stop there as Midland Valley continued to add runs in every inning after that point. While North Augusta added another four runs in regulation, it wasn’t enough to catch back up after the fourth-inning explosion.
Up next for the Mustangs will be a fresh face in South Florence on the road. Anderson said she’s looking forward to what a new team can bring to the table in their game on May 8. She said no matter what, she knows her group will bring the same fight no matter who they have to play.
“They know how to keep the energy,” she said. “And they know that that's what it's about. So they're going to keep that energy until we're done. So they’re going to stay up and we’re going to fight until the end.”
The Jackets will have to bounce back quickly to face another familiar team in South Aiken on May 8. They have a history of success against the T-Breds, with two dominant wins this season and a winning streak against the team dating back to 2014. Jones said North Augusta will continue to treat the matchup like any other postseason game rather than get caught up with the region implications.
“ I think goes to show you how tough our region is this year,” she said. “But you have to just treat it game by game. The coaches take from what we learned from our previous games against each other during the season and we just try to help the players maneuver throughout the ball game. And they just need to go out there and play the game that they know how to play. We don't need to treat it like a rematch or anything like that. It's just another playoff game.”