Siegel wins Gold division, Ooltewah takes Silver title in Lady Trojan tournament

Baylor head softball coach Kelli Smith, left, talks defensive strategy with assistant Tom Watson during the Gold championship game in Soddy-Daisy's Lady Trojan Invitational at Warner Park.
Baylor head softball coach Kelli Smith, left, talks defensive strategy with assistant Tom Watson during the Gold championship game in Soddy-Daisy's Lady Trojan Invitational at Warner Park.

Recent history repeated itself over the weekend in the 28th Soddy-Daisy Lady Trojan Invitational high school softball tournament.

Siegel won the Gold championship Saturday at Warner Park, and Ooltewah was champion of the Silver bracket. It marked the second time the Murfreesboro team won the Gold division in the tournament. The other was in 2016, when the Lady Owls also won the Silver championship.

Things didn't start Siegel's way in this year's championship game, but everything went the Lady Stars' way in the fourth and fifth innings in a 12-2 victory over Baylor. They had beaten GPS 4-0 in a semifinal to get there.

"This does nothing but build our confidence," said Seigel first-year head coach Shawn Middleton, who succeeded Perry Lyons, coach of the 2016 team who's now at the newly opened Rocky Fork Middle School in Smyrna. "We know what GPS and Baylor have been and all the championships they've won. We want to get to (the Class AAA state tournament in) Murfreesboro, and something like this should give us a lot of ammo in the end."

Ooltewah had some struggles in pool play Friday, thus ending up in the Silver bracket for teams that finished in the lower halves of their pools. But the Lady Owls came out in single-elimination and beat Central and Blackman before defeating fellow District 5-AAA member McMinn County 11-3 in the final.

The game was stopped in the bottom of the fourth inning by mutual agreement. Ooltewah coach Jon Massey said both teams had run thin on pitching.

"We swung the bat well today," Massey said. "I'm proud to see us come back. The first two games (Friday) we didn't play too well. A lot of that had to do with the competition. They kind of exposed some things."

' Ooltewah 11, McMinn County 3: Both teams totaled eight hits, but the Lady Owls were way more efficient with theirs. They had a four-run first inning, capped by Mabry Carpenter's two-RBI double, and a six-run fourth, punctuated by Cheyanne Sales' three-run home run.

Also for Ooltewah (18-4), Sydney White went 2-for-3 with a double, two RBIs and two runs scored. Freshman Anna Lee Moore got the pitching victory and Kayla Boseman, who was coming off pitching a shutout the game before, got the last two outs for the Lady Owls while it was a two-run game and got the save.

"They just wanted to play," Massey said. "We earned ourselves being in the Silver bracket. We earned it with the way we played (Friday). I'm just glad we got to play six games in two days. It was a good barometer."

' Siegel 12, Baylor 2: The Lady Stars came back from being down 2-0, scoring five runs in the fourth and seven in the fifth. They had 10 of their 11 hits in those uprisings and the Lady Red Raiders also helped them out in those innings, when they made four of their five errors, hit two batters with pitches and walked two.

Vanessa Westfall was among the leaders for Siegel (19-1), going 3-for-4 with two RBIs and scoring two runs. Caitlyn McCrary's hits drove in two runs each - her homer in the fourth and her double the next inning.

Sophie Golliver went from throwing a no-hitter in the semifinal to pitching a three-hitter with no walks and five strikeouts in the final.

Baylor (12-2), which has been on spring break and before the weekend hadn't played since winning Hendersonville's Commando Classic on March 17, manufactured its run in the first. Cheyenne Lindsey reached on an infield hit, stole second and scored two groundouts later. Sophie Piskos got the RBI.

Starting pitcher Ace Sellers, who hit an opposite-field home run to right leading off the second, was taken out during the fourth and ended up being the losing pitcher.

"Acelyn said she just couldn't get her ball to break the way she wanted it to," Baylor coach Kelli Smith said. "They had already had a couple of pretty good hits off of her before that, and they'd hit the ball hard a few other times. We just made the plays.

"The bottom line is we got a lot of good softball in. We learned some more things about our team. Now we need to kind of regroup, work hard and move forward."

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

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