It took a while for the North Pike Lady Jaguars to start hitting. When they did, only the mercy rule could stop them.
The Lady Jaguars began hitting with power in a six-run fourth inning and rolled to a 13-0 rout of the South Pike Lady Eagles in the teams’ slowpitch softball district opener on Tuesday at the Johnson Station softball fields.
It isn’t that the Lady Jaguars didn’t hit the ball the first three innings. They scored three first-inning runs, capped by Kelsey Lord’s two-run triple into the left-center field gap that scored Breanna McKenzie and Shelby Abdul-Hadi.
In the second inning, North Pike (7-1, 1-0) tacked on two more runs on LeeAnna Hill’s double to center field and Savannah Johnston’s RBI infield groundout.
In the third, Lord began to show the power that the Lady Jaguars would soon unleash with a two-run, inside-the-park home run to left-center field that scored McKenzie ahead of her.
But a small adjustment in the batter’s box led to five extra-base hits in the decisive fourth inning.
“We were trying to stand too far back in the box,” North Pike head coach Sonya Wallace said. “We moved up in the box; we finally relaxed and started hitting.”
After Charmeissa Gordon reached on an error to open the North Pike fourth inning, Hill lashed a triple over the head of the South Pike center fielder to score Gordon. Dakota Parks and Johnston then laced consecutive doubles into the left-center field gap to make it 10-0.
One out later, Johnston came home when Lauren raked a line-drive triple to center to make it 11-0. Wells scored when McKenzie launched a triple to deep right-center field. Abdul-Habi invoked the mercy rule when she stroked a single to left that scored McKenzie to make it 13-0.
“(South Pike’s) outfielders were playing too shallow,” Wallace said. “We knew we had the power to burn them. We were just trying too hard. We needed to relax.”
Along with the game-ending base hit, Abdul-Hadi also earned the mound win for North Pike. She limited South Pike (0-3, 0-1) to three hits, walked two and struck out three.
Despite her team’s third consecutive loss to open the season, South Pike head coach Barbara Matthews was encouraged by the Lady Eagles’ play.
“We’ve improved since the first game,” said Matthews, whose Lady Eagles dropped a season-opening doubleheader against Wesson two weeks ago. “We batted a lot better today and we fielded a lot better. We did a lot of good things tonight.”
The Lady Eagles will travel to Lawrence County on Thursday. Meanwhile, North Pike will visit Crystal Springs on Thursday.
