Gallery by Ashley Honaker
Beckley – It’s not easy being green but Lily Carola made it seem that way.
The senior fired a one-hitter Friday in Beckley, guiding Greenbrier East to a 9-0 win in five innings over rival Beckley.
The win gives East a season sweep of the section and secures the top seed and home-field advantage for the Spartans in next week’s sectional tournament.
Carola was lights out from the jump, retiring the first 14 batters she faced. The one hit she did give up was a borderline error at second base but she bounced back to retire the next batter and cap her stellar performance.
“She just missed the perfect game,” East head coach Aaron Ambler smiled. “She did a great job hitting her spots tonight. The better the team, the location is extremely important. At times we’ve been hurt this year – we’ll get an 0-2 or 1-2 count on a batter and miss a spot and give up a hit and she did a good job tonight all the way through hitting her spots and had good location.”
Carola dominated all evening, striking out the first three batters she faced and fanning nine batters overall. In fact only one of her pitches left the infield, a pop-fly in the fourth inning.
“I think that was probably the best game I’ve ever had,” Carola said. “I’ve really mentally been struggling a lot so it felt good.”
For the Flying Eagles it was the second consecutive night in which they lost 9-0 and managed just one hit.
“I’m trying to figure out why and I’m not real sure,” Beckley head coach J.R. Bird said of the offensive struggles. “The weather has played a big role and we had rainouts all the time. This week we haven’t. We’ve played all week and I don’t know if that has something to do with it. We traveled a lot earlier in the week. I don’t know if we’ve played four or five games in a week yet because of the weather. I don’t know if that caught up to us a little bit or not but we just didn’t hit the ball.”
Electing to rest ace Aubrey Smallwood, Bird rolled out Taylor Scott who was steady despite the nine runs allowed. Of them only two were earned with the defense committing four errors behind her.
The tone was set early when Alanis McClary reached on an error to open the game and eventually scored on another one at shortstop.
An RBI groundout from Reagan Cline in the second inning extended East’s lead to 2-0 before the floodgates opened in the fourth.
Sending nine batters to the plate, East poured in five runs, again taking advantage of Beckley’s miscues.
An Ally Martin single was sandwiched between a pair of outs but an error on a ground ball at short allowed No. 8 hitter Jenna Groves to reach, extending the inning. A passed ball allowed Martin to come around and score before Cline was hit by a pitch to put two on for McClary. McClary reach again via error to load the bases and Hailey Ervin capitalized.
The junior outfielder smacked a single up the middle to score two and extend the advantage to 6-0.
No. 3 hitter Taylor Boswell kept the train rolling with an RBI single of her own, capping the five-run outburst. After East stranded 17 runners on Tuesday against Independence, the explosion was welcomed as they left only three on base Friday.
“A couple nights ago we couldn’t have stranded anymore runners than we did,” Ambler laughed. “In six innings we stranded 17 batters so it was a matter of time we had to get dome hits with runners on and we found some spots and found some holes.”
“I think they were tired,” Ambler continued. “A couple of them said they went home after school, slept all evening, got up and ate dinner and went back to bed. We’ve traveled a lot lately and had long trips so they needed a day off and they responded pretty well at practice the day after that and came out tonight and were ready to play.”
Gracie Gumm and Jenna Groves collected an RBI each in the fifth inning to account for the finals runs.
Beckley’s lone hit came courtesy of Natalia Meade.
If there was a positive to take away for the hosts it’s that they had the chance to see East’s co-aces in Kayla Bartley and Carola at different points this season ahead of sectionals.
“That’s definitely a good idea and I did the same thing on my end,” Bird said. “I didn’t throw Aubrey and that was kind of preplanned. I thought Taylor pitched excellent to be honest. I just think the defense pretty much failed her early. I had planned to maybe pitch her about half the game, get her through the lineup a couple times and maybe switch them. That seemed to work at Bluefield pretty good but with us out of the game there wasn’t any sense in it.
“She needed to rest up too and Taylor took one for the team and just went ahead and finished the game off. They did start hitting her later in the game which I expected because they’re a good-hitting team and they’re eventually going to catch up. But if you could’ve flip-flopped them in the middle you could’ve probably thrown them off.”
East improves to 16-8 and will cap the regular season on Saturday against Class AA power Hebert Hoover. Beckley finishes the regular season 16-7 and will open sectional play next week against No. 3 seed Princeton. Greenbrier East will face No. 4 seed Oak Hill and have homefield advantage throughout the sectional tournament.
