Belles take second place after loss to Greenville
Published 3:00 am Wednesday, July 13, 2016
GREENVILLE – A nine-run inning proved too much for Troy to overcome as the Belles lost 12-11 Tuesday in the semifinals of the state tournament.
Troy finished the tournament as co-runners up.
“We just didn’t pull it out in the end,” said Troy head coach Terry Garrett. “We played good, but we had one bad inning … that’s what got us.”
Greenville took an early lead in the first inning when they scored a run on two hits. They upped their lead to 3-0 in the third inning when they had two walks and hits in the inning.
Troy ramped up the offense in the fourth inning, scoring nine runs. Avery Henderson, Kendall Navarre, Maggie Phelps, Lexi McLendon, Ashlyn Shaver, Raeleigh Beaty,who hits a home run, Ashelyn Atwell and Abbie Barron all scored, with Phelps scoring twice.
Troy walked seven batters in the bottom of the fourth. Combined with six hits, Greenville had its own nine-run inning and retook the lead at 12-9.
“We had one bad inning where we tried to shift things around with our pitching,” Garrett said. “We walked a lot of batter and that cost s a lot. It was one bad inning.”
Troy pushed across a run in the fifth when Sydni Garrett drove in Henderson with a single and another in the sixth inning when AJ May drove in Navarre.
“This team has fun and always battles,” Garrett said. “They have stayed up even when they have been down. They were down two times down here and they stayed up and had fun with it.”
Garrett got on base with a one-out single in the seventh and was followed up by a walk by Phelps.
Both runners moved into scoring position on a wild pitch, but Barron popped out to first and Molly Wares was out trying to implement a squeeze bunt.
The loss for Troy puts an end to what was a fun summer of softball for the Belles.
“They put in a lot of hard work and they had fun doing it,” Garrett said. “This team was expected by a lot of people to go as far as they did. They should be very proud of where they got. They came up just one game short.”
The members of the 2016 Troy Belles are: Kendall Navarre, Maggie Phelps, Raeleigh Beaty, Sydni Garrett, AJ May, Abbi Campbell, Ashlyn Shaver, Abbie Barron, Molly Wares, Lexi McLendon, Avery Henderson and Ashelyn Atwell.