Harvey Simpson
Cordele Dispatch
Cordele —
CORDELE — Not that there was ever any realistic chance of it eventually happening, but there’ll be no undefeated fast pitch softball season for Crisp County High’s Lady Cougars.
Colquitt County’s Lady Packers saw to that Monday, capitalizing on their clutch hitting and errors by their host to score a 5-3 victory that left the home team with a 6-1-1 report card to date.
“I’m disappointed as we were outplayed in every phase of the game,” Crisp coach Kevin Blampied said afterwards. “We got outhit; we got outfielded, and we got outsmarted on the bases. It just wasn’t our day, period.”
At the midway point of the game, the Lady Cougars were in position to remain undefeated with the 3-2 lead they held.
Two of their runs came in the first when wild pitches eventually plated Shelby Simmons, who had reached on an error, and Lauren Clements, a courtesy runner for pitcher Hallye Hobbs, who had drawn a walk.
After Colquitt used a pair of hits and Crisp fielding miscues to pull even in the top of the third, the Lady Cougars went on top with a lone tally in the last of that frame.
Anna Posey, who had doubled, completed a tour of the bases when Hobbs drew a free pass after Taylor Holmes had been hit by a pitch and Cassidy Jolly had walked to load the bags.
The Lady Packers used a pair of singles, a double and a Lady Cougar error to score twice for a 4-3 lead. A walk, a double and an error gave Colquitt its and the game’s final run in the seventh.
“We didn’t do a good job of putting our bats on the ball in this one, collecting just three hits while posting a season high for strikeouts in a game with six,” Blampied said.
“And to make that situation even worse, most of them came when we had runners on base and thus failed to cash in on as many scoring opportunities as we should have.”
Crisp has a Region 1-AAA outing on tap today, hosting Westover at 5 p.m.
