South Greene made a living off Chuckey-Doak’s mistakes on Thursday night and improved to 4-0 in District 1-2A play with a 15-7 victory over the visiting Lady Black Knights. It wasn’t a clean game from either side, but the Lady Rebels capitalized when they needed to and pulled away late to secure the win.
“I just feel like it was one of those games where I don’t know that we were totally in it. I don’t know that we had the right mindset and I don’t know how to really describe it. The energy really wasn’t there to start the game off. I don’t know if we thought it was going to be a cake walk or what we thought it was going to be. I just don’t feel like we were playing as hard as we could,” South Greene’s head coach Amy Hawk said.
The win boosts South Greene’s total record to 6-1 as they remain perfect in District 1-2A games. Chuckey-Doak dropped to 1-8 (1-3) overall.
“It always feels good to get your conference wins and put yourself in that position to be at the top,” Coach Hawk expressed. “I think it was a total team effort. We got some hits in the bottom of the lineup, we got some hits in the top of the lineup, we made some defensive plays here, a defensive play there, with the exception of some fly balls the defense was solid.”
Kortnei Bailey started the afternoon for South Greene and hung a zero to begin the first inning with a pair of strikeouts. She collected South Greene’s first hit in the bottom half, but no runs scored and the score sat at 0-0 after one. She added two more strikeouts to her collection in the second.
The Lady Rebels put together a seven-run inning in the second and took control early. Nevaeh Davis walked to begin the inning. Hailey Williamson reached first safely on an error and Davis advanced to third in the process. Reagan Arrowood grounded out to first, but an attempt to hold Williamson at second resulted in an error that gave Davis the lane to score the first run. Williamson scored on another throwing error two batters later.
While the bases were loaded Chuckey-Doak’s errors bit them the most. Whitney Reaves and Kortnei Bailey were hit by pitches that advanced Macy Roberts and Rachel Johnston home. Paisley Brobeck hit a sac fly to deep center to score Madison Hensley on a tag up from third. Reaves and Bailey both scored on a passed ball.
South Greene led 7-0 after two.
Chuckey-Doak was quick to respond with Tralyn Southerland mashing a 2-RBI double to score Hayleigh Seidl and Jayden Myers. They cut their deficit to 7-2 halfway through the third.
The Lady Rebels threatened to score with the bases loaded and zero outs in the bottom half. Three-straight walks loaded the bases. A passed ball warranted a bang-bang call at the plate and Seidl was able to get the tag on in time for the runner to be out. A heads up play at third base ended the inning with a double play. Emmie Tipton caught a line out and quickly stepped on the bag to double them up.
The Lady Black Knights stayed in it with timely hitting. After back-to-back walks to begin the inning, Saniah Atchison grounded into a fielder’s choice, but got Abby Donoho home safely from third. Seidl delivered a two-out, RBI-triple to score Atchison next. They trailed 7-4 halfway through the fourth.
South Greene got both runs back in the bottom half though. Kortnei Bailey walked to leadoff and scored on a throwing error to third two batters later. Davis walked next and scored on a groundout two batters later too.
The Lady Rebs led 9-4 after four.
Chuckey-Doak threatened to tighten the gap with bases loaded in the fifth and only one out, but Kortnei Bailey ended the inning with back-to-back punch outs.
Sadie Knowles led off the bottom portion with a hit and scored not long after on Reaves’ sac fly. Their lead bumped up to 10-4.
The biggest inning of the game was the sixth inning. Chuckey-Doak managed to score three, but left three runners stranded at the end of the inning in a three-run ball game. South Greene did what needed to be done to stretch their lead out to the largest margin all game at eight runs to secure it.
Atchison and Myers started with two-straight walks and scored on another 2-RBI double from Tralyn Southerland. She made her way across the plate later after a walk occurred with the bases loaded. With the bases juiced and two outs, a hard-hit ball through the left infield would’ve scored one with the possibility of scoring two and would’ve brought the margin to one. The runner at second couldn’t avoid the ball and made contact with the live ball. Interference was called and put an end to the inning.
“It got to 10-7 with the bases loaded and we had to work our way out of it. The girls stepped up big on defense,” Hawk said.
Chuckey-Doak narrowed the score to 10-7.
Davis hit a leadoff single and Williamson was struck by a pitch. Arrowood hit into a fielder’s choice play at second and the double play attempt resulted in an error at first to get her to second base. Donoho recorded a strikeout, but a back-pick attempt at third got away from the defense and Williams scored from third. Knowles hit an RBI-single to score Arrowood and Hensley followed with an RBI-triple that scored Knowles. Hensley then made it home on Bailey’s RBI-single.
The Lady Rebels recorded a double play to finish the game with a 15-7 victory over Chuckey-Doak.
“You look at the score and you should be happy with that, but I’m really not satisfied with our performance today,” Coach Hawk stated.
South Greene travels to University High for their next contest on Monday night. Chuckey-Doak will host University High today at 5:00 at Chuckey-Doak High School.
