Northwest Whitfield earns split in 4A softball series

Staff Photo by Doug Strickland/Chattanooga Times Free Press - Gloves lie in a pile in the Lady Trojan Invitational softball tournament Friday, March 29, 2013, in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn.
Staff Photo by Doug Strickland/Chattanooga Times Free Press - Gloves lie in a pile in the Lady Trojan Invitational softball tournament Friday, March 29, 2013, in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn.

TUNNEL HILL, Ga. - There are times you might want a sports team to be all business and to hang on every pitch or play as if it were life or death.

Other times you might prefer a more, say, loose bunch of athletes that doesn't get too high or low.

Consider the Northwest Whitfield Lady Bruins softball team the latter. After losing in heartbreaking fashion in the first game of their Class AAAA first-round playoff series with Oconee County on Wednesday, Northwest rallied to win the second game, 7-4.

The deciding third game will be played at 4:30 today at Northwest.

"It bothered the coaches much more than it did the girls," coach Jason Brooker said of the opening 7-5 loss in which the Lady Bruins (21-12) led 4-1 entering the seventh. "This is a different kind of group and they got over it quickly. They came out loose in game two and played their game."

Oconee (19-13) managed just six hits in the opener, but two of them went over the fence off the bat of Hannah Partridge, including a grand slam in the fateful seventh. The inning was set up by three walks, an error and Ansley Hart's RBI single before Partridge deposited her second long fly to deep left.

The Lady Warriors took a 1-0 lead in the second game before Northwest caught fire. The Lady Bruins sent eight batters to the plate in the third, scoring twice on Jolene Gale's groundout and Molly Middleton's single. They sent 10 to the plate in the fourth, this time scoring four runs on five hits, two walks and a wild pitch, with the big hits coming from Alyssa Ward and Henley Henderson.

Northwest, though, left the bases loaded in each inning.

"I was hoping for a few more runs there," Brooker said. "They can hit it, and I was hoping we could put them away. They played the infield in there in the fourth and we hit two hard ground balls right at them for outs at home. Nothing you can do about that."

Northwest added a run in the fifth on Gale's groundout to make it 7-2, but Oconee scored twice in the sixth and had the tying run at the plate in the seventh with two outs when pitcher Caitie Parsons induced a popup to end the game.

"We seem to do things the hard way," Brooker said with a shake of his head. "We had to go three games to beat Heritage in the region tournament and the last time we made it to Columbus (as one of the final eight teams for state) we had two three-game series to get there."

KayLeigh Fitzgerald had three hits in the first game, with Peyton Tuder and Henley Henderson adding two. Henderson and Ward had two hits in the second game, with Gale knocking in three runs.

Contact Lindsey Young at lyoung@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6296. Follow him on Twitter @youngsports22.

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