CLEVELAND, Tenn. — It’s been said that defense wins championships.
It remains to be seen if Ooltewah will win the District 5-AAA high school softball championship, but it wasn’t defense so much that put the Lady Owls on the brink of winning the title.
Ooltewah pounded out 24 hits in two games Tuesday at Bradley Central, which helped the Lady Owls overcome seven errors on the way to a 5-2 victory over Soddy-Daisy and a 9-6 defeat of Walker Valley.
Ooltewah (34-8) will play Walker Valley (24-8) today at 6 p.m. for the championship. Both will move on to the Region 3 tournament, where the winner will host and the loser will travel.
“It’s too bad we can’t do like basketball and take four,” said Ooltewah coach Jon Massey, who was complimentary of both of Tuesday’s opponents although Soddy-Daisy ended its season 26-9.
Kayla Boseman was the winning pitcher and went 2-for-4 in the losers-bracket final for the Lady Owls. She also registered a save in relief of Cameron Baltimore in the first game of the final.
“Our pitching tonight was phenomenal,” Massey said. “I think Cameron Baltimore and Kayla Boseman were tremendous. They threw strikes, and they didn’t let things behind them bother them that should have. We’ve got to clean that up in a very quick way.”
The Lady Mustangs also committed five errors, including two that allowed the first two batters to reach in the bottom of the first inning. Allie Jones then delivered a run-scoring single, and before the inning was over Ooltewah had come up with seven hits and scored eight runs.
Leadoff batter Tiera Lemon went 4-for-5 with a double against two Walker Valley pitchers. She drove in three runs and scored two after going 2-for-4 with an RBI triple against Soddy-Daisy.
Shelby Sutton and Jadyn Raschke had three hits apiece in the second win with Sutton driving in two and scoring one and Raschke scoring twice. Raschke was 2-for-3 with an RBI and a run scored in the opener.
Sydney Ventura was 2-for-4 for the Lady Mustangs and scored a run during their big uprising.
Soddy-Daisy, which has seven seniors, five of whom dealt with injuries this season, got its runs against Ooltewah in the fourth on a two-run single by Abby Walker.
“You always hate when it ends like this, whether it’s in the district or the Monday game in the region,” Soddy-Daisy coach Wes Skiles said. “I always hate it for the seniors. I hate it for them because the rest of us are able to come back and redeem ourselves.”
Contact Kelley Smiddie at sports@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/KelleySmiddie.