Gallery by Greg Barnett
South Charleston – Lightning struck twice and it zapped Greenbrier East.
Following the trend of their first game, an 11-9 loss to University, the Spartans again saw their opponent score five runs in their last inning batting, overcoming a deficit to down the Spartans.
This time it was Cabell Midland which scored five runs with two outs in the bottom of the sixth to eliminate the Spartans 7-5 Wednesday evening at Little Creek Park in South Charleston.
The loss was a disappointing one for the Spartans, making their first appearance in the state tournament. They had both games under control until late errors doomed them.
After committing two in the seventh inning of the first game, they committed four total, and again, two in the final inning Midland batted.
“That’s it in a nutshell – we gave two ballgames away today,” Greenbrier East head coach Aaron Ambler frustratingly admitted. “We had poor defensive play at times and we just needed to finish. We did a good job putting the bat on the ball today in both games especially for extra bases. We hit some gap shots and the first five innings we rolled along pretty well, made some plays and played good defense. And we just did not finish.”
East took control early, leading 5-0 heading into the bottom of the fourth with the heart of its lineup doing the heavy lifting. Kayla Bartley crushed a one-out triple that scored Hailey Ervin and Taylor Boswell. Bartley carried that momentum into her second at-bat of the evening with a double that scored Ervin before eventually scoring herself on an RBI single from Ally Martin for a 4-0 East lead.
Speedster Reagan Cline piled on in the fourth, swatting a home run that pushed the lead to 5-0.
And slowly but surely the lead evaporated.
Midland went to work getting a two-run triple from Nicole Harris in the bottom of the fourth to make it 5-2. That scored held into the sixth where East surrendered the lead.
The inning began with promise for East as Lily Carola induced a pair of groundouts before errors took hold.
After Harris notched a two-out single, Baylee Smith hit a ground ball to third and an errant throw kept the inning alive. Midland capitalized with a pair of singles that resulted in runs.
With the tying run on third, East conceded it along with a pair of insurance runs. A single from Sabrina Rose found its way all over the infield, eventually leading to Rose coming all the way around the bases with a pair of runners preceding her.
East attempted a rally of its own with a leadoff double from Ervin but she was called out after leaving early on a fly ball. An acrobatic snag from Quinn Ballengee ended the game.
“It’s certainly possible that the first game got in our head because it happened to us twice,” Ambler said. “They’re eerily similar. like to think it didn’t but yeah, I mean, I don’t think we had the pressure on us. Honestly we told the girls coming down here I said, ‘You know this is the first time we’ve been here. The pressure is not on you. Get down there and have fun and play good clean softball,’ and we did for two games up until an inning or two.”
The losses were particularly hard to swallow for a Spartan team that showed enough to stake a claim to best in Class AAA.
“I truly think, I mean not by the results of the game, obviously, but if you watch the game, I think you could say we’re as good as any team down here,” Ambler said.
East will graduate a crop of talented seniors including starting pitchers Lily Carola and Kayla Bartley, all-state infielder Taylor Boswell and catcher Alanis McClary amongst others.
