The Eagles clear the bench to celebrate with Bailey Taylor at home, after she blasts a two-run shot against Jefferson Davis. Photo/Martha Ladd
SUMTER – The Richard Winn Lady Eagles took to Sumter for the two-day SCISA 1-A Softball Tournament, where they went 2-2 on the weekend, and were eliminated by the Wardlaw Academy Patriots after a 3-1 loss.
In game one, on Friday evening, Richard Winn squared off against Jefferson Davis Academy. The Eagles pulled off a narrow 5-3 victory over Jefferson Davis on the shoulders of the batting duo Bailey Taylor and Riley Simpson.
Taylor, in addition to notching the win on the pitcher’s mound, blasted a homer and scored two batters. Freshman Riley Simpson knocked in the other three Eagle RBIs in the win, and the slim victory set-up a game two match-up on Friday night between Richard Winn and Dorchester Academy.
Dorchester throttled Richard Winn by the final 11-0. Dorchester’s Hanna Reeves pitched six shutout innings, with four strikeouts and also knocked in a two-run home run that kicked the mercy rule into effect, and ended the game.
Savanna Varn, Madison Murray and Ashlynn Lynch all contributed two base hits apiece for the Raiders. Savanna Shelton, Elizabeth Traxler, Lydia Hofstetter and Emma Moorer chipped in a hit each in the double digit winning effort.
The loss to Dorchester, set the Eagles up to face St.John’s Christian Academy in an elimination game on Day two of the tournament. The Eagles responded well to the day one loss and thumped St.John’s 15-5.
“It’s hard to recover from a loss, anytime,” Richard Winn coach Millie Lambert said. “ I think we did good this morning recovering initially but in the long run it was kind of hard, after they got done to pull them completely back up.”
In the victory, Bailey Taylor added three more RBIs to her two day total, on three more base-hits. Alyssa Atkerson tallied three RBIs as well and also picked up three hits, including a a two-RBI triple.
Kimmy Albert drove in a couple RBIs on her two hits, and Jennifer Haney came off of the bench with a pinch-hit RBI in the fifth inning that ended the game. The win set-up another elimination game for The Eagles, this time against Wardlaw, and the winner of that game would go on to a final series later in the week.
Richard Winn prepared for the Wardlaw game with less than a 20-minute break between that and the St. John’s game. Savannah Rodgers started for Wardlaw, and Bailey Taylor made her fourth start in just two days.
“It’s hard when I have one pitcher,” Lambert said on the said on the short break between games. “She throws seven innings, a lot of pitches, it’s hard for her to let her muscles recover and actually be fresh for the next game, and we needed to be fresh for that game, but she did a great job not matter how many pitches she threw.”
Rodgers and Taylor dealt fire all game long for their respective teams. Rodgers struck out the first six Eagle batters and by the end of the game she had punched out 14, while Taylor only gave-up two hits and struckout four.
“She’s good,” Lambert said on Rodgers’ performance. “ She’s very consistent, she’s smart, she’s a very good pitcher. She knows where we’re not very good at hitting it and she puts it there. She did a great job for them.”
Unfortunately for the Eagles, one of the two hits they allowed was for an RBI that gave Wardlaw a 1-0 lead. The Patriots put up two more runs, both on errors, in the bottom of the third, and Richard Winn did push across a run in the fourth, but with Rodgers dealing the heat, the Eagles could not climb back to the lead.
Wardlaw’s 2-1 victory ended Richard Winn’s season.