Lady Devils end year in super regional finals

Published 1:00 pm Thursday, October 20, 2022

GUYTON — Tift County’s softball state run ended Wednesday, Oct. 19, bringing to a conclusion a remarkable month and an even more remarkable day. South Effingham won the super regional final, 9-0, advancing to the finals in Columbus. For their efforts, the Lady Devils finish in the sweet 16.

Head coach Taylor Barber’s team had their best season in quite a while. They finish 17-16, their most wins since 2015 (18) and their first winning record since that same year. The state tournament wins were their first since 2014.

That Tift even had a shot at unseating South Effingham was a remarkable feat. The Lady Devils had to win two games earlier Wednesday. The South Effingham rematch was their third game in five hours and fourth in 27 hours. Only two No. 4 seeds in Class 6A even saw a super regional final. River Ridge, the other, advanced to Columbus.

“I thought they did a very good job with the 1-0 mindset,” he said, referring to the team’s mantra of taking everything game by game, pitch by pitch and not worrying about what happened in the past.

Exhaustion was as big an enemy as South Effingham. Barber reported a very quiet bus, even before they began heading south on I-95.

Unable to afford a loss, Tift survived. First was a quick 9-1 affair with Woodward Academy that lasted six innings. What followed was a marathon, a 14-13 win against Dunwoody that saw the Lady Devils surrender two big leads but come clawing back in the 7th.

“When your back’s against the wall and your whole season is on the line, none of that matters. You have to find a way to get it done. They got it done,” Barber said.

Knotted at 13, Lily Robinson dumped a single over shortstop to drive in Macy Hand. Robinson pitched a 1-2-3 bottom of the 7th to seal the win, with two strikeouts.

“They could have gotten down on themselves,” he said, “but they scratched and clawed and found a way.”

But there was too much South Effingham in the finale. The Lady Mustangs scored seven runs in the 1st.

Barber couldn’t stop talking about the job Emily Rowe did in relief.

Rowe came in when South Effingham was up 6-0. Only three more runs scored after that. One of those was the a sac fly in the 1st.

Robinson and Rowe each pitched in two games. Battling through errors, Robinson only surrendered two earned runs across 10 1/3 innings. Rowe gave up three in 6 1/3. The duo gave out a mere four walks.

Tift County had lots of hits during this marathon: 11 against Woodward and whopping 23 against Dunwoody. Every player had a hit in the latter and only one did not deliver two hits.

Bailee Williams homered and drove in four runs against Dunwoody. Loralee Bennett and Gracee Wood each had a three-RBI game. Bennett scored four times.

This is in spite, Barber said, of teams appearing to have a good scouting report on the Lady Devils. All of the teams seemed to know their tendencies.

Woodward started slow and Tift only had a 1-0 lead through four innings. Then they began clicking and posted six in the 5th. Two more in the 6th was enough to that contest early.

Barber said he thought Dunwoody might be a continuation of that momentum. They were up 6-3 after two frames, 7-3 going into the bottom of the 3rd. But it was not the most memorable day defensively and it soon became a battle against themselves and Dunwoody.

“That made it a little more difficult on us, but ultimately we found a way to get it done,” he said.

Pushed to their limits, they met South Effingham again. Robinson got a base hit in the final and Angie Martinez worked a walk against Bailey Kendziorski, one of the state’s top prospects.

Even South Effingham was impressed by Tift’s grit. On Twitter, the Lady Mustangs responded to the Tift County Softball account’s announcement of season’s end, congratulating them for the run.

Tift went 8-3 in October to propel themselves into state and ultimately to the super regional final.

‘That last month of the year was a fun, fun run to be on,” Barber said. “They figured out they were a lot better than they were giving themselves credit for.”