Gallery by Greg Barnett
South Charleston – Dropping a 17-14 slugfest earlier in the day, Bluefield was hoping to keep the momentum on offense rolling.
Laila Varney stopped the Beavers in their tracks.
The senior pitcher started and closed the game, pitching five shutout innings a 7-4 win for Herbert Hoover Wednesday evening at Little Creek Park in South Charleston.
The win brings an end to Bluefield’s first state tournament trip that showed promise.
“This team is one that I absolutely, I genuinely love and the heart that they showed today, the heartbeat showed up here,” Bluefield head coach Justin Hall said. “Really, all season long the heart that they’ve showed is my biggest takeaway. It’s a tight group. They’ve been that way for a really long time. And they showed the heart that they had and they never stop.”
After facing a slower pitcher earlier in the day, the Beavers saw the best the state had to offer in Varney and worked just two walks against her.
The four runs the Beavers managed came against Hannah Shamblin in relief.
Cara Brown drove in the first Beaver run in the fourth on a fielder’s choice force-out. Maddie Lawson added the biggest hit in the fifth, lining a three-run double into the gap in left-center for the Beavers last runs of the season.
But much like their first game, the Beavers played catchup all day long.
Varney helped her own cause in the first inning with a two-out double and Lexi Kennedy and Addi Chapman followed suit with a pair of RBI hits to put Hoover up 3-0. The lead expanded to 4-0 in the second following a Sadi Wehrle single.
After three innings Varney was pulled for Shamblin after pitching the previous game against Winfield. The Beavers immediately found success against the new hurler, scoring all four of their runs against her. Hoover, which added a pair of runs in the fourth courtesy of a two-run hit from Kennedy, went back to Varney for the final two innings, ahead 6-4.
She proceeded to strike the side out in order in the sixth and retire it in order in the seventh.
“That’s way different from what we saw in the first game,” Hall said. “That was different from what we saw a lot of the season. The last time we saw that velocity with that rise ball was probably when we were at Myrtle Beach. So you know, hand it to her because she kept us off balance with that and we had a hard time playing off of it.”
“Laila pitched her heart out against Winfield,” Hoover head coach Missy Smith said. “We were fortunate enough to get up 6-1 and were able to give her a little bit of a break and she was fresh to come in and finish at the end.”
The win and quick start came despite a fast turnaround for Hoover.
The Huskies had a little over 30 minutes for a break after their Game 1 loss to Winfield as a lighting delay extended that game.
“Really we didn’t wait about 30 minutes and I was lucky to get them fed and back out here so they didn’t even have time to think about what happened before,” Smith laughed. “We just knew there was a game, let’s go and it worked out. We scored three runs with two outs in the first inning and anytime we can score two-out runs and that’s huge.”
Hoover, which fell into the elimination bracket for the fourth consecutive season, will aim to work its way out Thursday morning when it plays the loser of Winfield-Keyser. The Huskies are 2-1 in state championship tries over that span, claiming titles in 2021 and ’22 before falling to Winfield last season.
