By Shannon Fagan, WEIS Sports Director
OXFORD – For a team making its first appearance at the state softball tournament in five years, the Cherokee County Lady Warriors managed to get off to a good start.
In their tournament opener against fourth-ranked Houston Academy on Friday at Oxford’s Choccolocco Park, they manufactured a first-inning run to take the lead. They even chased starting pitcher Emily Adams an inning later as they loaded the bases.
But then the Lady Warriors then ran into two pitching buzz saws: Alabama commitment Braya Hodges, then against Ole Miss commitment Abby Herndon from Brooks.
Hodges held the Lady Warriors to just one hit – a triple by Grayson Tucker in the top of the third inning. She struck out 12 in 5 1/3 innings, including six in a row after Tucker’s triple, and allowed just one walk to Abby Lea in the top of the second.
Hodges then got all the run support she needed in the bottom of the third inning on Mary Suzan Aman’s two-run inside-the-park home run to left field in out-dueling Cherokee County’s Emma Hill in a 2-1 decision.
In losers bracket action against sixth-ranked Brooks, Herndon allowed just four hits and struck out 12 in the Lady Warriors’ 10-0 season-ending loss in six innings. Cherokee County finished the season at 30-16.
“We’ve preached all week, even going into regionals, once you get to this stage you’re going to see good pitching,” Cherokee County coach Brad Weaver said. “We’ve stressed and stressed and stressed about putting the ball in play. We had more strikeouts than we really wanted to today. We’ve just got to dig deep, put it in play and see what happens.”
Against Houston Academy, Hill was the tough-luck loser for the Lady Warriors. She allowed just two hits, walked two and had a pair of strikeouts. She also drove in the lone Lady Warrior run on a single to center against Adams in the top of the first that scored Abby Lea. Lea led off the game with a single to center.
The Houston Academy loss sent the Lady Warriors to the losers bracket against Brooks, also a tough-luck loser in its first game on Friday, 3-2 to Northside.
It was almost a carbon copy of the Lady Warriors’ first loss, only this time against the lefty Herndon.
Lea, who suffered the loss in the Brooks game, led off by reaching on a Herndon error, but Herndon then struck out the side.
Brooks pushed across single runs in the bottom of the first and second innings to take a 2-0 lead, which proved more than enough run support for Herndon, who also struck out six Lady Warriors in a row at one point.
The Lady Warriors also aided Brooks with six errors. The Lady Lions ended the game in the bottom of the sixth by sending 11 batters to the plate against Lea and scoring eight runs.
“It’s hard to beat a good pitcher with six errors,” Weaver said.
Lea, Raechel Russell, Lanie Williams and Audrey Haygood had the lone Lady Warrior hits against Herndon. Haygood’s hit was a triple to left in the bottom of the fifth with two outs.
But as Weaver said, the Lady Warriors never produced the timely hit.
“You’ve got to have productive hits and we just didn’t have them today,” he said. “We had it to start with in that first inning (against Houston Academy), but we didn’t score again. We have to develop situational hitting. It just didn’t come today.”
If there’s any consolation, the Lady Warriors lose just one senior in KarLee Jolly. Weaver said the experience the Lady Warriors gained during the postseason and at state this season is invaluable.
“It is huge getting here for our juniors and underclassmen. They know ‘Hey, we can be here,’” he said. “Our expectations are nothing less than to be back here next year, be back at these fields, competing for a 4A state championship, and hopefully coming out with the blue (trophy).
“I’m proud of these girls. This is the worst feeling in the world in high school softball that you can have, but we’ve got to hold our heads high. We’ll start this summer to get ready for next year.”
