CLEVELAND, Tenn. -- Given the start Ooltewah had gotten off to this high school softball season, the Lady Owls may have had visions of hoping to run away with the District 5-AAA regular-season title. But Walker Valley showed Wednesday that it has other visions.
The Lady Mustangs trailed by two before they even batted, but they tied the score in the third inning, got a leadoff homer from Hallie Davis in the bottom of the fifth and held on and defeated Ooltewah 3-2.
The Lady Owls, who were coming off winning the tournament they hosted last weekend, lost for the second time in 20 games this season.
"Any district win is big, but especially when it's against a quality opponent," Walker Valley coach Lauren Limburg said. "Ooltewah is solid, one through nine. Their pitching is solid. Their defense is solid. They're sitting atop our district right now. That was a huge win."
Ooltewah fell to 4-1 in league play while Walker Valley (9-4) improved to 3-1. The Lady Mustangs' district loss was 5-2 at Ooltewah on March 17.
Ooltewah's Tiera Lemon rounds third and looks for the coaches signal as Walker Valley's third baseman Lara Bean defends on Wednesday, April 8, 2015, in Charleston, Tenn."There are a lot of games left," Limburg noted about the district race in which each of the seven teams plays 12 league games.
The top of the first didn't go as planned for right-hander Alicia Raymond, who took a hard shot off her glove hand on Tiera Lemon's infield single. Raymond stayed in the game but surrendered doubles to Allie Jones and Shelby Sutton, who drove in the runs, before the Lady Mustangs went to the dugout. Even the last two outs were lineouts.
But from there, Raymond limited the Lady Owls to three hits and no runs without walking a batter, and she struck out five. Lemon doubled starting the sixth and was the potential tying run at third base with one out when Raymond escaped the threat with a popout and a groundout.
"I can't say enough about her fire and toughness," Limburg said of Raymond. "She showed her desire to play for her team and compete on every pitch."
Losing pitcher Cameron Baltimore allowed seven hits, but three of them and both of her walks were in the third inning. One walk was to Davis, who had doubled in her first at-bat, with first base open. Lara Bean, who went 2-for-3, foiled the strategy by hitting an RBI single.
Davis's shot the next time up was deep to left.
"She's good," Ooltewah coach Jom Massey said. "She bats third for a reason. She hits the ball really hard."
Baltimore didn't have a strikeout in her six innings pitched but totaled 14 groundouts or force plays plus another out on a sacrifice bunt.
"We pitched well. We played defense well," Massey said. "But more than anything we've got to have that killer instinct. We got two in the first. We've got to follow it with two in the second.
"Cameron pitched well. She kept us in the game. We just didn't do enough offensively."
Contact Kelley Smiddie at sports@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/KelleySmiddie.