When GPS senior Ansley Bratcher stepped to the plate Tuesday evening with the bases loaded and her team trailing 6-5 with one out in the bottom of the eighth, she connected for a single up the middle.
Bratcher delivered a pair of RBIs and a walk-off win for the Bruisers to close the regular season, but it was more than that: Coming against Baylor, it was a rare moment of success in a Chattanooga softball rivalry that has become heavily tilted toward the Lady Red Raiders over the past decade.
Tuesday’s 7-6 extra-inning triumph ended an eight-game losing skid for GPS in the series — with the Lady Red Raiders outscoring them 78-14 over that stretch — and was just the sixth win in the past 40 meetings with Baylor, a stretch that has included seven state runner-up finishes in TSSAA Division II-AA for the Bruisers.
In 2014, GPS beat Baylor twice on the final day of the Spring Fling for the program’s eighth and most recent state title — all of them under coach Susan Crownover, starting with the first in 1998 before back-to-back trophies in 2000-01, then four in a row from 2007-10 — but since then, Baylor has quite simply owned the highest classification for Tennessee private schools.
The Lady Red Raiders’ current run of nine straight titles — the Spring Fling was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic — is the fourth-longest streak of TSSAA state championships in any sport, trailing the Baylor girls’ golf program’s run of 16 titles from 1995 to 2010, plus active streaks of 12 in a row by Hardin County in girls’ bowling and 10 straight by Alcoa in football.