Red Bank's softball team has long had some offensive woes when facing fellow District 6-AA competitor Central in recent years. But the Lionettes broke out of that in a big way Thursday.
The combination of Red Bank's batting and the Lady Purple Pounders' defensive deficiencies led to a 16-6 five-inning victory in the high school game at Red Bank that marked Central's first district loss in five games this season.
Central (7-12) had won the past three meetings between the teams, all shutouts. Red Bank's last win in the series was 1-0 in the winners-bracket final of the district tournament in 2016.
But even then, the Lady Pounders came back to defeat the Lionettes twice for the district title. And they beat them again in the Region 3 final, giving up a total of three runs in those three victories.
"The past so many years they've had a dominant pitcher that's just handled us," Red Bank coach Mandi Munn said.
Now Red Bank (13-6), at 2-0 in 6-AA, remains on track to be the top-seeded team in the district tournament for the first time in a long while.
"It's up to the girls," Munn said. "It's just up to them, and how bad do you want it?"
The Lionettes scored a first-inning run, but Central went up 5-1 after batting in the third.
"We came in and did our thing in the third inning," Central first-year coach Randy Crawford said. "Everything was working. We executed a hit-and-run and got a run off of that."
But the Lionettes answered with eight runs in the bottom of the inning. Munn said neither she nor assistant coach Richard Long said a word to their players before they batted.
"That was all on the girls," Munn said of the quick rally. "We were so angry and upset after that circus of an inning."
The Lionettes' two errors in the third were both on the same play that allowed two runs to score. But Central committed five errors in the third and fourth innings, when Red Bank scored 14 of its runs.
"The girls didn't get down," Crawford said. "They kept on cheering. It just didn't make up for making the mistakes we made out there."
Bailee Phillips went 4-for-4, driving in two runs and scoring two. Winning pitcher Hannah Wood was 3-for-3 with a home run, double, sacrifice fly and five RBIs. Lexie Wright hit a two-run double and like Layla Babb finished 2-for-3 with two RBIs and two runs scored.
"We needed that," Munn said. "The past two games we've not hit very well. We needed a game like that to kind of get us back on track."
Amanda Roy and Jada Taylor each went 2-for-2 for Central - Roy drove in a run and each scored one - while Mikayla Gill had a two-RBI single and scored twice.
"That's probably the most I've seen them not call for a ball and let a ball drop in, in any game we've played this season," Crawford said. "We had several of those. We were not hitting the cutoff. That would let them advance another base because of it.
"That's tough. They've got a good hitting ball team. They hit the ball well. It was just an all-around defensive thing today with us."
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him on Twitter @KelleySmiddie.