The South Pittsburg Lady Pirates are playing pretty good softball these days and they rewarded themselves by winning the Lookout Valley Invitational Saturday afternoon at Lookout Valley Elementary’s O’Mary-Conard Field.
The Lady Pirates won their pool with wins over Grundy County and CSAS on Thursday and Friday before beating Covenant Christian in the second semifinal Saturday and then taking host Lookout Valley down in the championship.
South Pittsburg slipped past the Lady Falcons by a 5-4 final for a berth in the finals, but that last game wasn’t as close as the Lady Pirates put a little icing on the cake with a three-run sixth before prevailing, 7-3.
Lady Pirate coach Vic Grider could only smile when the final game on Saturday ended.
“South Pittsburg isn’t exactly known as a softball school, but we’ve come a long ways and I feel like we can compete with almost anybody,” Grider said after his team improved to 6-1 with its sixth-straight win.
“We’re not giving up free bases with errors and our pitching has been pretty good, but I’m really proud of the progress we’ve made. We have a good group of young ladies who have been with us since the eighth grade and they’ve really bought into what we’re trying to teach.
“Those last three runs in the sixth were huge. I had thought about bringing my starter back in at the start of that inning, but decided to leave our little eighth grader out there with the nice lead,” he said in reference to Dara Durham, who was the pitcher of record for the Lady Pirates after allowing just one hit over the final four innings.
Unlike Grider, Lookout Valley coach David Dinger wasn’t the happiest guy on the field when the final out had been recorded.
“That’s about as bad as we can play,” he fumed after a post-game talk with his girls.
“We didn’t catch it, we didn’t throw strikes and we didn’t do a very good job running the bases. There’s nothing we did that was positive today as we just didn’t do anything. That’s a totally unacceptable performance on our part, but the good news is that it’s still March and we have a lot of softball left to play,” Dinger added.
The Lady Pirates scored twice in the bottom of the first before adding single runs in the second and fourth innings. Then in the bottom of the sixth with a precarious 4-3 lead, South Pittsburg sent seven hitters to the plate and they responded with three runs on just one hit as they made things a whole lot more comfortable for Durham.
Lookout Valley scored once in the second and twice more in the fourth, but the Lady Jackets could only muster four hits on the afternoon and were really never a threat at the end once South Pittsburg padded its lead.
Hunter Elwood was the leading hitter for South Pittsburg as she finished the game with four hits, including a triple, double and a pair of singles.
Morgan Aker and Durham also had one hit apiece with Aker’s double in the first driving in the first run. Durham then blooped a single past short, but was unable to score.
Casey Crownover was the only Lookout Valley player with two hits, both singles. Brianna Sexton and Zoe McGlamery also had a single each.
Durham was the winning pitcher after allowing one run on one hit in three innings of relief. She also had three walks.
Brianna Sexton suffered the loss after allowing the final four runs on just two hits. She also had four strikeouts and three walks.
LOOKOUT VALLEY 010 200 0 – 3 4 4
SOUTH PITTSBURG 210 103 x – 7 6 2
Dinger, Sexton (3), Dinger (4), Sexton (4), Dinger (6), Sexton (6) and Shown; Coffelt, Durham (4) and Kennemore.
(email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@gmail.com)