Gallery by Karen Akers
Shady Spring – After scoring 35 runs in its last three games – all wins – recent history suggested Greenbrier West’s bats were on track to crater.
And they did.
The Cavaliers managed just four hits, three in one inning, struggling through a 7-2 loss Monday night at Shady Spring.
The win gives the Tigers a season sweep of the Cavs with the last win, a 4-0 decision, going to Shady on April 25.
“That’s our life this year,” West head coach Tony Hinkle said. “I mean, the games we’ve won, we’ve killed the ball and the games we’ve lost we struggled to hit but our small ball, we’ve done a very good job with that this weekend and we done a good job tonight the first three innings with it.”
Shady’s offense never experienced this same struggles Monday.
The Tigers had just one inning where they failed to put a runner on base, getting a runner in scoring position in all of those frames.
Majority of the damage came in the second and sixth innings where the hosts scored three runs each.
After West drew first blood in the top of the second, scoring Maddie Fields on a fielder’s choice, Shady went to work in the bottom of the frame.
Avary Bragg singled and Bella Sturgill and Brooklynn Blankenship followed by working a pair of walks to load the bases. Lacy Osborne scored Bragg’s courtesy runner with an RBI single to knot the game before Kendra Pizzino, batting No. 8 in the order, smacked a single that plated two more.
“We take turns and you never know from game to game, who’s going to come on,” Shady head coach Nikki Mays said. “We’ve had the top lineup do stuff we’ve had the middle do things and then multiple times we’ve had the bottom of the lineup come in strong for us too. It literally takes us all as a team to work together to pull stuff off that we’re pulling off.”
West produced its best inning in the top of the third, stringing together three consecutive singles to load the bases but a sacrifice fly from Julia Herndon was followed by a pop out to the catcher and a strikeout to limit the damage to a run.
Shady eventually answered in the bottom of the fourth when Pizzino reached on an error and scored on a Jenna Joyce single.
West meanwhile produced just one base runner after the third inning and it came on an infield error. That came with Joyce in the circle for the final four innings of the game.
“She pitched a little I think in our first game,” Hinkle said. “But she had a lot of spin on the ball and she done a good job. We just we needed to be a little more aggressive when she come in and we just didn’t do it.”
With Joyce shredding through West’s lineup, Shady’s delivered the finishing touches in the sixth to put any comeback hopes to bed.
A two-out error in left-field and later a throwing error down the third base line allowed Jayla Joyce to score. A pair of walks to Jenna Joyce and Bragg set the stage for Sturgill who delivered a two-run single for the final runs of the night.
“Probably two or three runs were unearned,” Hinkle said. “That always gets us but you know, when you have a lot of walks and you get batters on, it puts pressure on everybody and that tends to happen.”
Bragg finished with two hits to pace Shady while Sturgill and Pizzino drove in two runs each.
Lane earned the win for Shady while Brilee Redden suffered the loss for West despite a 10-strikeout effort.
