Sometimes even state-championship level programs have a game where anything that can go wrong does. That was the case for Silverdale Baptist Academy, last year's Division II-A softball state champ, with a nightmarish Tuesday afternoon everyone on the team would just as soon wipe from their memory.
GPS, the runner-up in last year's D-II AA state tournament, took advantage of nine Lady Seahawks errors to register an 18-4 road win in five innings.
"In all my years of coaching I've never seen anything like that," said Lady Seahawks coach Tim Couch, whose team was missing two starters. "We couldn't make routine plays, and when you lay an egg all you can do is own it, beginning with me.
"We're real young, but that's no excuse. We're a better team than we showed today, and we'll go back to work and move forward to get better."
Silverdale Baptist (5-4) took a comfortable 4-0 lead with a three-run second inning, highlighted by Savannah Turner's two-run single. Turner finished 2-for-3 with a triple, and Maddie Tankersley also plated a run with a sacrifice fly.
GPS (7-2) rallied with four unearned runs in the third to tie, then added seven runs in the fourth - three scoring on Silverdale errors, three on a double by Brynley Oliver and one each on RBIs by Abbie Reel and Chapel Cunningham.
"I don't think we were ready to play to start the game," GPS coach Susan Crownover said. "I'm not sure why, since the sun was shining, and after all the bad weather we've had you would think we'd be excited to have a day like this. But it took us a while to settle in and get the bats going."
GPS scored seven runs again in the fifth, highlighted by three-run home runs by Hannah Sanders and eighth-grader Isabella Jenkins, who clobbered one over the left-center-field fence in her first varsity at-bat.
Sanders allowed four hits in the first two innings but none after that to also earn the pitching win.
"I felt like I was pitching OK and hitting my spots in the first couple of innings until Coach Crownover came over and asked me what was wrong," Sanders said. "After that little pep talk I realized I needed to concentrate and make better pitches, and that's what I did.
"The home-run swing felt great. Especially after being so mad at myself for striking out the first two times up. I finally got the barrel of the bat around and made good contact."
Kairyn Songer went 3-for-3 with an RBI for GPS.
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293. Follow him on Twitter @StephenHargis