East Hamilton softball coach Norma Nelson can consider her idea to have hosted a tournament on the final weekend of the TSSAA Divison I regular season a good one. That's because Saturday her Lady Hurricanes won it.
East Hamilton beat neighboring District 5-AAA rival Ooltewah 3-2 in the Choo Choo Classic's Gold championship game, which was stopped after six innings because of a time limit.
The Lady 'Canes entered Friday's pool play at the Summit of Softball complex with an 8-13 record and proceeded to climb to .500 after being unbeaten over the two days.
"Right now is when you want to be playing well," Nelson said. "Hopefully we can keep up playing good ball."
Ooltewah's Mackenzie Patterson pitched a one-hitter in the final, and Syvanna Rogers' double for East Hamilton did not factor into the scoring. But all three Lady Owls errors did.
Miracle Gorman led off the bottom of the first by drawing a walk. A throw that hit runner Whitney Richardson on her sacrifice bunt left runners on the corners.
With Richardson on the move toward second, Ooltewah tried a play to potentially cut down Gorman at the plate should there be a double-steal attempt. Second baseman Shelby Sutton charged in, rather than cover second, but the throw to her sailed high, glancing off her glove, and ultimately Gorman scored and Richardson ended up at third.
After a popout, an errant throw to the plate on Rogers' grounder made it 2-0 and left her at second. She stole third, Sydnie Rogers walked and Alyissa Sue's force play brought in the third run.
"We took advantage, and we hustled," Nelson said. "They don't usually make a lot of mistakes, but we took advantage of the ones they did make."
Ooltewah coach Jon Massey went to the pitching circle for a conference in the middle of the mess the Lady Owls created.
"We didn't play well early," Massey said. "I tried to get them back on focus. You can't give them three runs. She was out there throwing strikes."
Kayla Boseman went 2-for-2 with two doubles for the Lady Owls. Her ground-rule hit in the third drove in their first run.
Ally Chernak was 3-for-3 for Ooltewah. She doubled in the fourth, advanced on a wild pitch and scored on Jadyn Raschke's fielder's choice.
The Lady Owls threatened in the sixth, which started with a long flyout. After two were out they loaded the bases, but winning pitcher Sydnie Rogers got the final out on a comebacker.
Rogers, who allowed seven hits, walked three, hit one batter and struck out none, would not have been the winning pitcher if not for her outfield. Abbi Harden, Kennidy Hood and Richardson totaled five putouts, and not one was a routine play.
Richardson made a diving catch in center at the start of the second inning before the next two Lady Owls reached base safely. Harden made the catch near the fence in Ooltewah's final at-bat.
"The last couple of weeks they've really come on," Nelson said of her outfielders. "They played really, really good defense in that game. When that fly was hit to left in the last inning I thought, 'Oh my gosh. Is that going out?'"
* Lincoln County 2, Sale Creek 1: In the Silver final, the Lady Panthers rallied late but came up short.
Mikah McCombs, Sale Creek's lone senior, began the sixth and final inning with a bunt single. After Leah Campbell's second single of the game, cleanup batter Shelby Sullivan sacrificed the runners into scoring position.
Madison Stott's groundout produced a run and moved the tying runner to third. However, a popout ended it.
"Everybody we played was in (Class) AAA. I think we ended up 2-2," said Sale Creek coach Clifford Kirk, whose Class A team is now 19-11. "That wasn't bad for us. We made some great plays, some not so great. I think we're going to be OK. I don't care to play these upper-level teams. It's only going to make us better."
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him on Twitter @KelleySmiddie.