CALHOUN, Ga. – It wasn’t all coach Tony Ellis had hoped to see, but Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe’s softball win Thursday at Calhoun High might turn out to be one of his team’s biggest of the season.
The Lady Warriors won 3-2 in eight innings over their new Region 7-AA foes.
Fifth-ranked LFO (5-1, 2-0) and seventh-ranked Calhoun (11-3, 2-1) figure to battle for the sub-region title, and Thursday’s game proved to Ellis’ players that even though they moved down from tough Class AAA this season, nothing will come easily in their new region.
“I knew coming down here, with their tradition, they weren’t going to lay down just because LFO was coming to Calhoun,” Ellis said. “I told our kids, but I don’t think they believed it. They realized about the fifth inning, though, that this was a dogfight.
“I’m proud of what they did to come back and win the ballgame, but I wasn’t proud of how we came out for the first five innings.”
The Lady Warriors held a 1-0 lead going into the bottom of the fifth when the Lady Yellow Jackets, being no-hit to that point by LFO senior Maddie Bray, came to life. Tori Jones, one of only two seniors in the starting lineup, belted a Bray pitch over the center-field fence leading off the inning, and Bre Walraven followed with a double.
Walraven scored the go-ahead run moments later on an error, though Bray worked her way out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam to keep the game close. The Lady Warriors tied it in the sixth when Shelby Robertson reached on an infield hit, stole second and third and scored on Calhoun freshman Allysa Shawgo’s wild pitch.
The game remained tied until the eighth when Courtney Crawford’s line-drive sacrifice fly scored Maryanne Morgan, who began the inning at second base under international tiebreaker rules and was sacrificed to third by Ashleigh Armstrong. Calhoun had runners on third and second with no outs in the bottom half, but LFO reliever Monica Vickery worked out of the jam, ending the game by getting Jones to fly to left field.
“I just wanted to get that run in for the team,” Crawford said. “Calhoun battled us all the way through, but we never gave up. We are playing for October and we want the state [title] real bad.”
Robertson had two of LFO’s five hits. Bray struck out seven and walked one before giving way to co-ace Vickery, who struck out four and stranded five runners in three innings.