GREENVILLE – The Covington Lady Buccs competed against two higher division teams in a double-header on Saturday and closed out the day with one win and one loss to hold a 6-1 record at this point of the season.
In the opening game of the day the Lady Buccs suffered an unfortunate 11-2 loss to Greenville, a softball program that is traditionally one of the powerful teams in the state. Then, the Lady Buccs defeated Wayne 11-10 in a very close game.
Starting off against Greenville it looked like the Lady Buccs were in position for a victory as they scored two runs in the first inning. The big hits opened up by Ava Hartwig, Jayda McClure and Emalyn Johnson that led to the two runs across the plate.
Unfortunately, Greenville erupted throughout the first three innings by scoring five runs in the bottom of the first, three in the second and two more in the third inning to take a commanding 10-2 lead.
What benefitted Greenville was the errors committed by Covington’s defense that eliminated possibilities to limit several scoring runs.
After the third inning, the Lady Buccs played so much better defensively, but Greenville’s pitcher made great adjustments to limit hits for Covington. Overall, the Lady Buccs connected on just four hits throughout the game, while Greenville tallied 19 hits.
In the second game against Wayne, the first two innings were at 0-0 until Wayne scored three runs in the top of the third. Covington responded with two runs in the bottom of the third inning and eight runs in the fourth to take a 10-3 lead.
At that point it appeared as though Covington would possibly capture a rune-rule victory, but Wayne responded to put itself in position to capture a come-back victory by scoring four runs in the fifth and three runs in the seventh. Fortunately the Lady Buccs were able to get one more run in the bottom of the fifth inning and made enough defensive plays to hold on for a narrow 11-10 win.
Both teams pounded out 14 hits each in that game.
Overall, the Lady Buccs didn’t execute at their high standard against two talented teams this Saturday, but the entire roster is extremely motivated and will use this day to refocus and ignite themselves to excel in their next game – which his a huge showdown against a TRC opponent on Tuesday at Miami East.
