GREYHOUND SOFTBALL
Some of the names and faces may be new on the softball field for the Lady Greyhounds, but a pair of games last week cemented the fact that Jones County is again among the top teams in the region.
Last Thursday’s 12-0 win against Eagles Landing gave the Lady Hounds a breezy win against a team they were expected to handle, and they did just that, getting four shutout innings from Ansley Pegg as she gave up two hits and allowed no walks. The win over Eagles Landing bounced Jones County back from a topsy-turvy extra-inning loss on Tuesday night against Locust Grove, as the Lady Hounds rallied from a 6-0 deficit to tie it up before losing 9-6 in eight innings.
The Lady Hounds didn’t help themselves early against Locust Grove, a team like themselves that most seasons aspires to make a deep postseason run. A scoreless game was broken open in the third inning as a pair of miscues spotted the Wildcats a 2-0 lead with an off-line cutoff throw and a throwing error on
Locust Grove.
back-to-back plays making it a 2-0 Locust Grove lead.
“It’s like I told them after the game, we didn’t lose it in the eighth inning, we lost it in the first five,” Lady Greyhounds head coach Tripp Burt said. “When you play teams like that, you can’t come out flat and make mistakes early on. We did a good job fighting back, but a few things toward the end got us.”
Two frames later, a one-out two-run homer later followed by a double made it a 6-0 Locust Grove advantage, but despite that, JCHS showed some earlyseason grit. After Allie Willis doubled and later scored for the first JCHS run in the fifth, Ciara Stephens and Aniya Canty reached base to start the sixth inning, and by the time it ended, the Lady Hounds had cut the Wildcats led to 6-5 thanks in part to a Leah Betts RBI single. Canty led off the seventh with a walk. When she later crossed home plate, it tied the score to force extra innings before Locust Grove’s trio of runs in the eighth inning ended up being the decisive tally.
“Rallying back, showing grit, that’s hard to teach,” Burt said. “They came out after it, and that is something you can build on because that can help you as you go toward October.”
Ciara Stephens went four and a third of an inning on Tuesday, giving up six runs, four earned, before giving way to Ansley Pegg, who pitched the rest of the way, giving up three runs, all of which came in the eighth inning.
On Thursday against Eagles Landing, the Lady Hounds scored once in the first and four times in the second for a 5-0 lead, putting things away for good with a seven-run fourth inning to end the game early by mercy rule.
Led by a triple and homer from Tranasia Parker, six JCHS batters had at least one hit, with Parker and Allie Miller driving in three runs apiece and Leah Betts having a pair of runs driven in.
