South Charleston – Independence needed to win in all three phases – pitching, hitting and fielding – to advance to the winner’s bracket in the state tournament.
It only won two of them.
The Lady Patriots issued five free passes, leading to three runs as they fell 5-0 to Oak Glen Tuesday in the Class AA state tournament. With the loss Indy falls into loser’s bracket, sitting one game away from elimination
“Delaney said she had trouble holding the ball,” Indy head coach Ken Adkins said. “Their pitcher complained about it too. There’s no dirt here so the slick ball is an issue. We have to figure that out, but everybody has to deal with it. So that was a struggle earlier. We tried to get through that part of it but there’s three things we didn’t do well. We didn’t pitch well, we didn’t hit well and we did not show any plate discipline.”
The game looked like a pitcher’s duel early.
The first run came in the third when leadoff hitter Sydney Brown crushed a triple to left. She scored when Lizzie Kell laid down a squeeze bunt in the next at-bat.
That score held going into the fifth when walks allowed runners to reach second and third with two outs. A triple from Sarah Brown scored both runners to make it 3-0.
The Golden Bears put the final touches on the game in the seventh when Sydney Brown reached on a single and Kell followed with a walk. An RBI-single from Maddie McKay scored the fourth run and a squeeze bunt from Sarah Brown topped the scoring, sending Kell home.
At the plate Sydney Brown turned out to be the star for the Golden Bears, reaching in all four of her plate appearances – three times on walks and once on a single.
“She is fantastic,” Oak Glen head coach Sherrie Garner said. “She plays all around the year and play a lot of ball. They had the investment to play hard today. They had the true team investment to come here and back each other up and she’s a leader. A sophomore, definitely a leader for us. And her sister the same thing. She came up and hit the triple for us.”
While the Golden Bears kept their discipline at the plate, the opposite rang true for Indy.
The Patriots produced just one hit – a seventh inning single courtesy of Sarah Bragg.
Still, they had their chances.
The first one came in the second when Kendall Martin was hit by a pitch and stole second with nobody out.
McKay responded in the circle by striking out the next three batters, stranding Martin at third.
“Plate discipline was an issue,” Adkins said. “Keyser’s coach told me they throw the ball up and hope you swing at it. He did it 42 times in three games and today most of the pitches we struck out on were high.”
She reached again in her following plate appearance courtesy of an error, but was thrown out on a strike-em-out throw-em-out double play to end the inning.
Indy’s last chance came in the sixth.
Kaylen Parks crushed a ball to center that was dropped, giving the Patriots a runner at second but back-to-back hard flyouts stranded her there.
“We stopped swinging at bad pitches and started making good contact,” Adkins said. “They did the same thing. When we threw pitches out and up they laid off of them.”
Bragg’s hit in the seventh was Indy’s lone highlight of the frame, but she was doubled off first to end the game.
Independence will now play again at 5:30 on Tuesday against Herbert Hoover in an elimination game. The two teams met once in the regular season with Hoover winning 5-2 in nine innings.
“I told them afterwards, I don’t think anybody is going to run away with this,” Adkins said. “I fully expect it’ll be a dogfight. We lost to both of these teams playing next in close games. We’re better than a 5-0 deal against that team, so we’ll see what happens.”
OG: 001 020 2 – 5 5 2
I: 000 000 0 – 0 1 1
Pitching and catching – OG: Maddie McKay and Sarah Brown; I: Delaney Buckland and Kaylen Parks. WP: McKay, LP: Buckland. Hitting – OG: Sydney Brown 1-1 (3B, 3 BB), Lizzie Kell 1-3 (RBI), Maddie McKay 1-2 (RBI), Sarah Brown 1-4 (3 RBI), Makayla Zoellers 2-3; I: Sarah Bragg 1-3.
