CCC SOFTBALL: Catholic holds off ACA in 3-2 win
Maddie Traywick was the tough-luck losing pitcher for ACA in the loss to Catholic. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
It wasn’t the type of performance Meagan Whisenant wanted to see out of her Alabama Christian Academy softball team.
The Eagles battled Catholic for seven innings before falling 3-2 to the Knights on Tuesday and the first-year coach sent her players home without a postgame meeting, describing herself as “angry” after watching her team squander several scoring opportunities.
“We stopped defensive practices to work on hitting,” she said. “We’ve done nothing but hitting. We tried to correct the mechanics but if you’re struggling with coachability, then we have a bigger problem. If you’re struggling with the ‘me’ instead of ‘we,’ we have a bigger problem. I think that’s where we are. We’re struggling with the ‘I want this’ rather than ‘what do I need to do to execute this for the ones that are on base’ for my team.
“It’s not about what you want. It’s about what the team needs.”
In a game where scoring opportunities were rare, Catholic got a run early and Alabama Christian didn’t, the difference in Tuesday’s outcome. In Alabama Christian’s first at bat, Elizabeth Hall doubled but was thrown out at the plate on Maddie Traywick’s single. In Catholic’s first at bat, Hayden Fitts led off with a single, stole second, went to third on a wild pitch and scored on a passed ball for a 1-0 lead.
Traywick didn’t surrender another hit the remainder of her four innings in the circle, but she led trailing 1-0 after ACA left the bases loaded in the third and left runners on the corners in the fifth.
Izzy Warrick pitched the final three innings for ACA, allowing unearned runs in the fifth and sixth innings after a timely groundout by Rylee Wilcoxson drove in Anna Hill in the fifth and a Gabby Eady single in the sixth drove in Jennifer Looney.
“We’ve struggled hitting the ball,” Catholic coach Whitney Toole said. “We still struggled today. We just had three or four that dug down and found a way to get a hit at the right time. We’ve got to get our bats going. We have enough experience that we should be playing better than we are. We need to step up.”
“We needed a win today, so that was good, but we’ve got a lot to go back and get working on.”
Fitts, Easy and Hall had the only hits for Catholic, which was held without a hit a day earlier in a 6-0 loss at St. James. Hall went 2 for 3 to lead ACA, driving in Warrick in the seventh to cut the deficit to a run before Traywick grounded out to end the game.
Warrick, Traywick, A.G. Blackburn, Maddie Owens and Campbell Hammett each had a hit for ACA.
ACA (1-6) travels to Orange Beach later in the week to compete in the Pot ‘O’ Gold Tournament. Catholic (4-5) remains home to play Trinity on Thursday.