Lady Trojans shut down top seed Ooltewah, 6-0

Soddy-Daisy's Jordan Woodward relieves Emily Edwards during their Lady Trojan Invitational softball tournament game against Red Bank on Friday, April 3, 2015, at Warner Park in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Soddy-Daisy's Jordan Woodward relieves Emily Edwards during their Lady Trojan Invitational softball tournament game against Red Bank on Friday, April 3, 2015, at Warner Park in Chattanooga, Tenn.

The silence heard Monday at Ooltewah in the winners-bracket final of the District 5-AAA high school softball tournament was the home team's offense. Mostly, Soddy-Daisy relief pitcher Jordan Woodward is to blame.

Woodward came on in the third inning to face a bases-loaded, one-out jam with her team leading by two. Then after striking out two of Ooltewah's most potent batters in the middle of the lineup, Woodward went on to pitch 4 2/3 innings of hitless ball and the Lady Trojans defeated the regular-season champion 6-0.

McMinn County is scheduled to play Ooltewah (36-5) this afternoon at 5 in the losers-bracket final. The winner will play Soddy-Daisy afterward in the final. If necessary, a second championship game would be played Wednesday.

Soddy-Daisy scored twice in the top of the third inning. Grayson Brown singled in one run and scored the other.

In the bottom of the inning, starting pitcher Shonna Penney ran into trouble with consecutive walks to Marissa Forrester and Addy Keylon to start with. Then after center fielder Megan Beasley stole a hit with a running catch, Shelby Sutton drove a pitch to deep center. It hit the top of the fence but came back into play for a long single.

Enter Woodward, who snuffed out the rally. She ended up walking one and hitting one to go with her six strikeouts.

"We've got two different styles of pitchers," Soddy-Daisy coach Wes Skiles said. "I just felt like it was a good move at the time, so I put Jordan in there. Every year I've got two pitchers that can help each other.

"We had a third ready, if needed," Skiles said, referring to Breanna Britton. "Those two worked well together."

Skiles also credited the job done by his catcher.

"Cameren Swafford did well calling pitches," Skiles said. "I can't take any credit for that. Our pitchers trusted her. I couldn't by any prouder of her."

Sutton's hit ended up being the only one the Lady Owls would get.

"We just didn't hit the ball," Ooltewah coach Jon Massey said. "A couple of balls we hit pretty well, but they made the change and we didn't adjust to the new pitcher. They outplayed us, outhustled us and out-everythinged us. They deserved to win.

"Now we've got a one-game season. We'll try to move on if we do what we need to do. Hopefully we'll get to play them two more times."

Woodward was also a big part of Soddy-Daisy's offense, going 2-for-4 with three RBIs. Leadoff-batter Alexis Trimiar was 3-for-3 with a walk, drove in a run, scored two and stole three bases. Brown also had an RBI single and a run scored in the Lady Trojans' three-run seventh.

Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him at twitter.com/KelleySmiddie.

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