Gallery by Tina Laney
With home-field advantage on the line Thursday, Independence’s season-long struggles cost it again.
The Patriots gave up four runs in the first inning, battled back to take the lead before coming undone again in a 9-7 home loss to Shady Spring.
The Patriots struggled in the circle and compounded those struggles with miscues in the field.
“We’ve lost 10 games this year and in eight of those 10 games we’ve given up four runs in the first inning,” Indy head coach Ken Adkins said. “In the other two games where we didn’t give up four runs we gave up five in the second inning.”
Shady, responsible for handing Indy one of those losses just five days prior, followed a similar blueprint as it did in the first matchup – hammer the Patriots early.
And the Tigers did just that.
An RBI double from Jenna Joyce was later followed by a three-run home run from Brooklynn Blankenship, putting Shady up 4-0 before the hosts ever stepped in the box.
“What we’re trying to tell the girls is to pay attention to what the umpire is doing and what he’s calling,” Shady Spring head coach Nikki Mays said. “We’ve had some (umpires) that are super tight, so we want them to be patient and some that are wide, so you want them to get to get aggressive right off the bat. That’s what we look for when we’re going to the plate.”
Indy got a pair back in the bottom of the first courtesy of RBIs from Emma Lilly and Ava Parks.
The comeback bid carried into the middle innings with a Paytin Brehm single scoring Parks to make it 4-3 in the third. The big bats in the Indy lineup followed that act by administering most of the damage in the following frame.
An error at second base allowed Allie Warden to reach before Alli Hypes tied the game with a double. Lilly did her two better, blasting a two-run homer off the fence in center to stake the hosts to a 6-4 lead. Struggling to plate runners, Shady broke its skid in the top of the fifth when Lacy Osborne lined a double that plated Blankenship and Bella Sturgill to knot the game at six.
From there the two teams moved in opposite directions with errors and missed opportunities plaguing Indy in the decisive sixth inning.
With two on and two out in the top of the sixth, Sturgill hit a grounder to short that was fielded cleanly but the throw was offline, allowing Joyce to break the tie and score for Shady.
That set the stage for Blankenship who capped her day with her third extra-base hit, this one a two-run double to account for Shady’s final runs of the night.
“They really just seemed to be throwing inside and fast inside because I like to crowd the plate,” Blankenship said. “I don’t feel like they hit their spots as well. And mostly they started throwing more outside and I was just really clicking tonight.”
Independence scraped out another run when Emma Simpson drew a bases-loaded walk in the bottom of the frame but the timely hits weren’t there for the Patriots. With their 3-4-5 hitters up to start the seventh they were able to put the tying run on base but struck out to close the game.
It was an appropriate ending for a game that saw Indy strand 15 runners on base with at least two left on in six of the seven innings.
“People give us cupcakes and we don’t eat it,” Adkins said. “We take a crap on it. I mean, we’re just not very appreciative of what people give us. But again, if you look at my stats, my first four hitters are well over – they’re batting .480 or something. Really we’re really good there. We’re not very good after that, and we’re just kind of struggling at the bottom and at times they have been okay. But we’re trying to somehow get back to the top and then tonight we did that every time.”
“One thing we kept talking about was executing making sure that we are doing our job when we have those runners on,” Mays said. “Sometimes it works, sometimes not but trying to convince our pitchers that we have their back – we’ve done better on defense this year to have their backs. I think they’re more comfortable this year.”
The win gives Shady a season sweep of Independence and puts it in position to secure the top seed in the sectional tournament next month.
“We don’t want to forget about this one because it’s hard to beat a team three times and I’ve seen it way too many times,” Mays said. “So I was definitely going for the win today but we’ve gotta be tough for the next one, even tougher than we have in the last two games.”
