Gallery by Heather Belcher
Beckley – Down two starters and a second pitcher, Greenbrier East faced tough odds in beating Beckley in the Class AAA Region 3, Section 2 tournament.
Behind the left arm of Josi Ervin, the bat of Taylor Boswell and some stellar defense, the Spartans defied them.
Ervin pitched a complete-game four-hit shutout as the No. 2-seeded Spartans moved one win away from claiming the sectional championship with a 4-0 victory over the top-seeded Flying Eagles Wednesday in Beckley.
After some early trouble in which Beckley’s No. 3 and 4 hitters Ava Mullins and Kayla Bird moved into scoring position with two outs, Ervin slammed the door and didn’t allow it to creep back open for three more innings.
“I was just trying to move it around on the plate and try to stay away from the middle,” Ervin said. “If I see they’re getting ahead of the ball I try to keep it away. Once you get a few innings in and see their batters a few times you know what to key in on and where to move the ball.”
After Mullins hit into a fielder’s choice with one out in the bottom of the first, she took third when Bird followed with a single, advancing to second on the throw.
A quick 4-3 putout diffused the threat with both pitchers – Aubrey Smallwood and Ervin – locked in.
Smallwood stifled East’s lineup through the first four innings, pitching a perfect game during that span while Ervin matched her in retiring nine straight after the early danger. They took different paths in dominating the opposing lineups. Ervin relied on the defense behind her to make plays while Smallwood fanned eight batters across the first four frames with seven of them going down swinging. It was a summation of Smallwood’s evening as she finished with 17 strikeouts.
“I think after we got through one time – we got through the third, fourth and fifth inning – everyone did a better job hitting,” East head coach Aaron Ambler said. “We put the bat on the ball and laid off the rise ball and made them make a play.”
When Smallwood finally did show signs of humanity, East took advantage.
A leadoff walk to Boswell to open the fifth stung the freshman hurler as Alanis McClarry followed with a one-out double that sliced down the left field line, scoring Boswell.
Strikeouts nine and 10 of the evening limited the damage to a run but the hosts couldn’t get Ervin to crack.
After Kendall Dooley and Jayden Shrewsbury both reached in the bottom of fifth on a single and an error, respectively, Ervin stranded the duo in scoring position with a popout, strikeout and fly out diffusing the threat.
With a run still separating the two teams in the sixth the Spartans cushioned their lead.
Smallwood secured the first out of the frame with a strikeout but an error at shortstop and an error at first base put a pair of runners on. Smallwood secured the second out with her 12th strikeout of the game but a throw down to third skipped into left field and allowed Aubrey Glover to cross the plate.
It turned out to make little difference.
Boswell followed by launching a pitch over the fence in right center for a two-run home run.
“It was a little unusual for us,” Beckley head coach Pam Davis said. “We’ve had a few errors over the season but not costly errors.”
The outburst was fatal for Beckley which mustered one hit the rest of the way – a leadoff double in the bottom of the seventh – but still failed to plate a runner.
It was indicative of the night the hosts had at the plate, coming away with just four hits despite putting the ball in play 20 times.
“We hit it right at them,” Davis said. “It was to centerfield mostly. We tried to lay down the bunt when we had a couple on and it just didn’t work out but I hope to see (East) again on Friday.”
With the loss Beckley falls to the loser’s bracket where it will face Princeton in an elimination game on Thursday in Beckley.
East will look ahead to Friday where it will face the winner of Thursday’s Princeton-Beckley matchup, needing one win to clinch the sectional title. The day off provides the Spartans some rest with Ervin having pitched the last two days and likely to do so again on Friday, as well as Saturday if a third game is necessary.
“As much as anything it gives us some rest with our pitching,” Ambler said. “We’ve had some injuries here in the last couple of weeks. We’ve had a concussion, and injured knee and an injured shoulder so we were down a few and pitcher is one of them. So it gives us a little bit of rest and that helps.”
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
