TUNNEL HILL, Ga. – When you beat a team ranked in the top 10 in the state by scores of 5-0 and 15-1 and know you still haven’t played your best, it’s a good feeling for a high school softball coach.
Jason Brooker’s Northwest Whitfield Lady Bruins did just that Wednesday in the second round of the Class AAAA state tournament, cruising past sixth-ranked Carrollton to earn the program’s third trip to the Elite Eight in Columbus in the last four years. The first-year coach is looking forward to the next few days.
“We just took care of business, and that’s been our motto all year,” he said of his 31-2, top-ranked team. “They’re better than the final score showed. It’s a relief right now and we can relax for a day or two, but we still have work do to.”
Senior pitcher Emily Boyd, despite battling a cold, was her usual dominating presence in the circle, tossing all 14 innings and allowing six hits, no earned runs and striking out 20. The only trouble she ran into came in the second inning of game one.
Nursing a 1-0 lead Boyd allowed a leadoff single to Samantha McDaniel and a one-out double to Katie Jones to put runners on second and third. The future Ole Miss Rebel recovered to strike out Taylor Schroeder on a 3-2 fastball and caught Amelia Cooper looking to end the threat.