GREYHOUND SOFTBALL
MCDONOUGH - Last season, Jones County won the right to host the region softball tournament, only to have it washed away by the weather.
This time, the Greyhounds took that task to the road, making three trips to Ola in as many days, storming to a region tournament title, topping the host Mustangs 4-3 last Thursday afternoon.
“Our players, they stepped up and stayed up the whole time,” Lady Greyhounds head coach Tripp Burt said. “They came out here and played for each other, it was big.”
With last week’s rain pushing the tournament final back a day, Jones County had to travel to Ola one more time than expected. But thanks to having not lost, Jones County had to lose twice to Ola should the Mustangs beat them in Thursday’s first game.
JCHS never gave Ola that chance, riding the strong pitching of Ansley Pegg, who pitched three times over three games. An infield single in the sixth inning by Shayla Pennington to plate Kimber Kent was the game winner as Pegg shut the door in the seventh, capping off a complete-game five-hitter.
“It was nerve-wracking, very nerve-wracking,” Pegg said of the final inning.
The game was deadlocked headed to the latter innings, but that changed with one single late-game run.
Both teams exchanged single runs in the first before each scoring two runs in the fourth to tie it at 2-2 with Bailey Jackson having two hits for Jones County and Shayla Pennington driving in three runs. Two of those were driven in on a two-run single in the fourth with Pennington also scoring the game’s first run after drawing a walk. It all set the stage for the pivotal final two innings where the Lady Hounds needed a run to pull ahead and allow Pegg to close it out.
“She was throwing it well,” Burt said. “We knew if we could scratch one out, we felt our chances were pretty good.”
All the while against Ola, Jones County was confident despite losing to them twice in the regular season.
“Ola’s been our biggest Goliath,” Burt said. “To be able to overcome them, it feels really good.”
In addition to the award of being region champs for the second year in a row, an even greater reward comes this week. By virtue of being the region’s top seed, Jones County will host a super-region format first and second round double-elimination four-team bracket. The winner of that will advance to next week’s Elite 8 in Columbus.
Jones County will face Coffee to begin play on Thursday at noon with the other side of the bracket pitting Northside-Columbus and Arabia Mountain. The losing teams from the first two games will play at 4 p.m. Thursday with the winner’s bracket game being at 6 p.m. Thursday. Friday’s loser’s bracket game will be at 2 p.m. with the championship set for 4 p.m. and the final game at 6 p.m., if needed.
It’ll be a new postseason format compared to past years where two rounds of best-of-three series set the field for Columbus. Regardless, the Lady Hounds will have the luxury of being at home instead of traveling to other host sites that would have awaited them at places such as Harris County and Chamblee.
Jones County, which ended the regular season with a finish of third, started the region tournament last Tuesday with a bang, winning 14-10 against secondseed Locust Grove, prevailing later in the day 12-0 against Union Grove, moving the Lady Hounds to the region tournament and forcing its final-round opponent to go through the loser’s bracket to face Jones County and use up more energy to get there.
“To start 2-0 in a double elimination tournament, that sets you up for success and makes that road a lot easier,” Burt said.
The Locust Grove win began as a slugfest. After Jones County scored seven runs in its top half of the first, the Wildcats answered with five tallies of their own. With Cate Downey called on in relief early to later be followed by Pegg, the two did enough to withstand the Locust Grove bats with the game tied 8-8 through three innings. But three runs by Jones County in the fifth and seventh were the difference as Downey took the win in three and two thirds of an inning before Pegg pitched the final three frames as both Tranasia Parker and Aniya Canty had five RBIs. In addition, Shayla Pennington had three hits with two hits from Canty, Taylor Nipper, Stella Lacy, Allie Willis and Tranasia Parker.
JCHS started its fifth inning with Lacy and Willis singling, and Parker homered for the inning’s big hit. It was the second of two dingers for Parker, who also hit a three-run blast in first. Not to be outdone, Aniya Canty’s homer in the seventh gave the Greyhounds a bit of a cushion.
At 1-0 in the tournament, the big offensive numbers continued against Union Grove. It made things easy for Pegg, who pitched four shutout innings one game after three innings of relief against Locust Grove as she gave up two hits over four innings.
With leadoff hitter Kimber Kent having three hits and Canty and Willis having two, the Lady Hounds took control early, sending ten batters to the plate in an eight-run first with the first four batters scoring a run followed by Lacy’s two-run double and a three-run homer by Parker.
A one-out double by Kent in the third got the offense going again, and she, Pennington and Canty scored runs for an 11-0 lead, one that would build to 12-0 an inning later when Leah Betts, running for Willis, was driven in by Kent.
