JASPER, Tenn. - Besides the obvious motivation of helping her team get back to the softball state tournament, Marion County junior Emmie Sneed had a personal reason for wanting to come through with the game, and the season, on the line Friday afternoon.
Knowing that a loss would mean not only a heartbreaking end to the season but also the last time she would get to play softball with her older sister Grace, she didn't hesitate when she got a pitch she could handle. The younger Sneed capped a dramatic rally in the bottom of the seventh inning with a single that brought home the tying and winning runs as the Lady Warriors defeated Sequoyah 7-6 in a Class AA sectional to earn their first trip to the Spring Fling in three years.
"I knew how bad all of us wanted to go to the state tournament, but I also knew winning would mean I would get to keep playing with my big sister, and that meant everything to me," said Sneed, who went 2-for-4 with three RBIs and gave her team the lead twice. "I just had confidence in myself when I got up there and believed that I was going to come through."
The game began disastrously for Marion (22-11), with three first-inning errors opening the door for the Lady Chiefs to score a pair of runs. Sequoyah pitcher Tristan Bradley kept the Marion bats quiet until the second time through the lineup, when Cleveland State signee Savannah Parker drilled a two-run home run over the left-center-field wall to tie the game and Emmie Sneed followed with the go-ahead RBI on a fielder's choice.
The Lady Chiefs pushed across one run in each of the next two innings to regain the lead, then added two insurance runs in the top of the seventh for a 6-3 cushion.
"I'm not going to lie and say I was totally confident after they got those two runs in the seventh to extend their lead, but I knew if we could just get back to the top of our order we could put some hits together," said Marion coach Randy Ellis, whose team also had rallied for a dramatic region championship win over Sequatchie County this week.
"Right before we went out for our last at-bat, I just kept reminding everybody to take it one hit at a time, and that's the approach they took."
Sophomore Sara Muir, a Tennessee commitment, led off the home half of the seventh with a single, and Savannah Thomas followed with another. Parker, who went 3-for-4, then drilled an RBI double off the left-field fence, and another run scored on a Sequoyah error. With one out, Sneed then jumped on the first pitch she saw and lined it into the left-center gap to bring home the game-ending runs.
"We had to overcome that first inning when we booted it around, and I made mistakes of my own today, but the girls always seem to play better than I coach," Ellis said. "To keep finding ways to come back in the clutch says a lot about this team."
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293. Follow him on Twitter @StephenHargis.