If Red Bank's softball team was anything Monday, it was persistent.
Playing top-seeded Central in the winners-bracket final of the District 6-AA high school tournament at Red Bank, the No. 3-seeded Lady Lions had every opportunity to get discouraged, lose focus or both as they tried unsuccessfully to mount some sort of offense against the Lady Purple Pounders' Brooke Parrott. But Taylor Bonds broke through with a double to start the top of the eighth inning and an out later Destiny Painter came through with a run-scoring, line-drive single to left that lifted the Lady Lions past Central 1-0.
Red Bank (16-11) secures a berth in next week's Region 3 tournament in addition to a spot in the district final.
"We're excited to be there," Mandi Munn said of the region tournament. "That puts them one step closer to their goal."
East Ridge, which beat Tyner 12-0 in four innings in a losers-bracket game Monday, is scheduled to face Central (17-16) today in the losers-bracket final at 4:30 p.m. The winner will play the Lady Lions at 6:30. If necessary, a second championship game would be played Wednesday at 4:30.
Parrott took a no-hitter into the eighth and ended up with 14 strikeouts. She walked three, but none of those runners advanced past first base.
"I thought Brooke threw too good of a ballgame to not have a 'W,'" Central coach LeeAnne Shurette said. "You've got to help your pitcher out."
Bonds led off the eighth with a high fly near the fence in left and ended up at second base. Shurette said she felt her outfielder gave up on the ball that hit off the fence for a double.
Hanna Land singled Bonds to third, and then a strikeout set the stage for Painter.
While Parrott was performing her mastery through the first seven innings, Red Bank sophomore right-hander Hannah Wood was matching her zero for zero. Wood limited the Lady Pounders to three hits. She walked one and struck out four.
"Really I just hit my corners," Wood said. "I'm thankful for the defense they played behind me. Not everything was working perfect, but I mostly hit my spots and got a lot of ground balls. It was a good thing they played defense behind me."
Munn said Wood had success against Central in the regular season until running into late-inning trouble.
"I'm very proud of her," Munn said. "She's grown and matured. She did a great job getting past that, because they're a good hitting team."
Munn said an unfortunate trademark has been the defense sometimes having one bad inning, but the only error Red Bank had was a dropped foul ball that didn't amount to anything.
"For every one inning we didn't have it," Munn said of a bad inning, "that was more confidence."
Central had a chance to win in the bottom of the seventh, which started with singles by Alexis Grampp and Reagan Benedict. After a strikeout, a fielder's choice loaded the bases before Wood got out of it with a popout and a groundout.
"I'll take responsibility for that," Shurette said. "I probably should've tried to bunt them over. The potential was there. But I wanted us to be aggressive and get that run."
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him at twitter.com/KelleySmiddie.