Gallery by Ashley Honaker
Fairlea – In two of the last three years Greenbrier East has won Game 1 of the Class AAA Region 3 championship before dropping the next two.
The Spartans defied recent history Tuesday and made some along the way.
Trailing 5-2 through four innings, East answered with eight consecutive runs, toppling George Washington 10-7 in Game 2 of the Class AAA Region 3 championship at Fairlea.
The win sends the Spartans to the state tournament for the first time in school history where they’ll face Region 1 winner University on Wednesday May 22 at 9:45 a.m. at Little Creek State Park in South Charleston.
For most of the first half of the game the Spartans trudged through the motions, seemingly lifeless in the field and at the plate.
With one swing of the bat Taylor Boswell changed that entirely.
The senior shortstop swatted a pitch over the fence in left-center, pulling the Spartans within a run at 5-4 in the bottom of the fifth inning. The hit proved contagious and energizing as Kayla Bartley, who came in to pitch in relief, followed with a game-tying solo blast.
“Hitting’s contagious,” East head coach Aaron Ambler smiled. “I think they just needed a little spark to get them going. It’s like they were nervous even though they were the team coming in here tonight with the win. Home field, Greenbrier East softball has never been to the state tournament before. I think they felt as much pressure tonight as what they did last night. So I think it just took that to kind of get a spark going and get them just to play softball. They were playing tight.”
The game was tight as well until the hosts busted it open in the sixth.
Carrying their momentum from the fifth, all nine batters stepped in the box in the sixth, part of a five-run outburst that served as a coronation as they exorcised the ghosts of past regionals.
“They’ve been there and they’re kind of used to going into a Game 3 and we didn’t want to do that,” Ambler said. “We wanted to end it on our home field tonight and give G-Dub a lot of credit. I mean, their pitcher pitched a heck of a game. She still pitched and hit her spots and we still chased them and their defense is phenomenal. If you hit a ball on the ground to them or hit it in the air, it’s typically an out. So we got lucky there in one inning. We couldn’t hit it past them so we hit it over. And the home runs helped, I think that changed the momentum of the game. And Lily (Carola) pitched a good game. We had a few mistakes early and Kayla came in. They hit her a little bit but we settled down once we got some runs on the board. I think that kind of got into the groove.”
Trailing the series 1-0 as it had a year ago, George Washington went on the attack early, scoring two first-inning runs after a pair of infield errors by the Spartans.
Aiming to help her own cause, Carola did just that in the bottom half of the inning, stroking a double that scored Hailey Ervin and Boswell to knot the game at 2-2 after a frame.
Unfortunately for Carola the defense behind her continued to struggle with another error in center allowing Karalyne Wade the time she needed to bolt down the third base line and score. An RBI double from Addie Armstrong in the third doubled the GW lead at 4-2 and at the conclusion of the inning Ambler made the switch from Carola to Bartley.
It made little difference initially as a pair of passed balls and a Faith Tetrick RBI single pushed the advantage to 5-2 in the fourth.
“Every time that we see a pitcher twice we can usually make a pretty good adjustment,” GW head coach Stacey Hobbs said. “And we hit the ball hard all night long. It was just a matter of the timely hits they had a couple timely hits. A couple things changed. I’m not one that usually complains about any sort of officiating. I don’t do that. I mean, in the end, we were given opportunities and we didn’t capitalize enough but I mean again hats off to them they played exceptionally well and I wish them luck for sure.”
Finishing the game without a strikeout, the Spartans were due for a regression to the mean with their ability to put the ball in play and pressure the Patriot defense. Reagan Cline was the first one to do so, hitting a single to set up Boswell’s two-out blast.
The seeds were sewn early for Barley’s homer. Prior to her solo shot, she hit a pair of loud, deep fly-outs, finally squaring one up when she knotted the game.
“Yes, I knew I just missed those two and I was just looking for a pitch that I could hit and drive and I got it,” Bartley said. “She was trying to work me with everything outside. So I was trying to have my feet on the line and just trying to take my pitch and hit it.”
East snapped the tie when it capitalized on GW’s second error of the game in the sixth. Gracie Gumm worked a leadoff walk before Jenna Groves was asked to bunt her to second. The bunt was fielded, thrown to second in an attempt to gun Gumm out. The throw was late but a relay back to first in an attempt to get Groves rolled up the first base line, allowing Gumm to run home.
Cline later scored on a wild pitch before Alanis McClary added an RBI to make it an 8-5 game. Carola, who saw Bartley and Boswell intentionally walked ahead of her, made GW pay with her second two-run hit of the night to add to the cushion.
Tylie Barton and Natalie Tomblin kicked the seventh inning off with a pair of hits and eventually scored but Bartley locked in afterwards to secure the final three outs in order.
“We put the ball in play last night but they obviously had a lot of put out no strikeouts so felt like if we just kept you know doing what we need to do at the plate and be selective with what we’re swinging at the hits will start to fall.”
Up next for East is a familiar University team. The two squads met once this season with East traveling up north to play the Hawks. University won that game 10-7.
