JACKSONVILLE – Back on March 11, the Spring Garden Lady Panthers and Cherokee County Lady Warriors played a one-run game in the winners bracket of the Cherokee County Softball Tournament.
The venue might have changed to Jacksonville State’s University Field 12 days later on Wednesday, but the result was still the same.
Spring Garden senior pitcher Abbey Steward led off the top of the seventh inning with a triple to right field, just out of the diving reach of Auburn Mullins. Catcher Maggie Jarrett then followed with a single to left to score pinch runner Helena Ingram for the lone run of the game.
Steward retired the Lady Warrior side in the bottom half of the seventh to clinch the Lady Panthers’ 1-0 victory and their first Cherokee County softball title since 2019. She allowed just two hits and four walks with seven strikeouts.
“We always know if our bats aren’t going we’ve got to play defense, and our team definitely played defense today,” Steward said. “In those games, it’s usually the first one who makes an error. When you have an error, you’ve got to capitalize on it, and that’s what we did. We struggled at the plate, but that’s OK because our defense was there.
“We kept popping it up, but we stayed focused and none of us got down. We just knew we had to do it that last inning.”
All the more impressive about Steward’s performances pitching and at the plate was they came in a swirling wind.
“There were a couple of loopy hits and fly balls falling in the wind, and that makes it tough,” Spring Garden coach Ann Welsh said. “That’s just a senior stepping up. She wanted it bad and she made something happen.”
The Lady Warriors (4-9) had their chances against Spring Garden (6-0). They loaded the bases on Steward in the bottom of the first inning with two outs, but she dug in to strike out Lady Warrior starting pitcher Emma Hill to end the threat.
In the bottom of the fifth, Cherokee County nine-hole hitter Audrey Haygood had a bunt single with one out, but Steward got Lady Warrior lead-off hitter Abby Lea to pop out to Spring Garden second baseman Bri Boles, who doubled off Haygood for the third out of the inning.
Then in the seventh with one out, Lady Warrior pinch hitter Libby Curry earned a walk, but Steward once again dug deep to retire the side, striking out Haygood to end the game.
“It’s hard to win a ball game with just one or two hits,” Lady Warrior coach Brad Weaver said. “When you have one, you’ve got to cash it in, make sure you follow it up with another hit or a sacrifice if there’s less than two outs. We’ve just got to do our jobs like that to score runs.
“We’ve got to make our adjustments at the plate early. That’s what us as coaches stress about hitting. We hit the ball one game and the next game we won’t hit anything. We’ve got to get consistently better at the plate. Spring Garden is a heck of a team. I can’t take anything away from them, but we are too. We’re on the verge of being good. We’ll get through this hitting slump we’re in and we’ll be just fine, but we’ve got to hit our way out of it.”
Catcher Lanie Williams led the Lady Warriors at the plate with a walk and a bloop single to right center in the sixth.
Hill, an eighth grader, was the tough-luck loser for Cherokee County. She surrendered just the lone run on two hits with a walk and nine strikeouts.
“She did a great job,” Welsh said. “I know she’s young, but she was obviously throwing something that was throwing us off. I thought she did a great job controlling the game.”
“Emma pitched really well for and Abbey did for them,” Weaver said. “We told our girls it was going to come down to one hit or one error. Unfortunately it was our error.”
