Andrews – The Lady Wildcats’ softball team began their season Thursday afternoon with a 26-13 loss to Hayesville.
The Lady Yellow Jackets got the scoring going right away by bringing home four runs in each of the first three innings. Andrews got on the board with an RBI single, but Hayesville led 12-1 through three innings before adding eight more runs in the fourth.
The Lady Wildcats rallied late in an attempt to close the gap and were able to score 12 runs in the last two innings. In the final inning, Kinleigh Queen and Carley Clark hit back-to-back homers that saw the team crowd home plate to celebrate the only two homers of the game from either team. After the home runs, Hannah Talkington hit a triple that led to scoring a run when she stole home.
Hayesville used two pitchers Thursday night, but Andrews’ Queen pitched a complete game. In the Lady Wildcats’ new head coach’s first game, Regan Holder was happy with how her team played.
“The team really battled through this first game. They’ve never been in this situation where they didn’t have a pitcher that’s been doing it all these years, so Kinleigh [Queen] really had to step up and that took a lot of guts to do what she did and nobody ever gave up or hung their heads and we created some insane rallies and had amazing hits. So I’m very proud of them,” Holder said.
Along with Queen, a few other players stood out in Thursday’s game.
“Carley [Clark] with the back-to-back home runs, she hit the home run right after Kinleigh, which was insane. All I had to do was say, ‘You’re next,’ and sure enough, she hit one next. Alexis [Bearley] hit a shot to start one of the rallies earlier in the game, so she stood out and played her part for that,” Holder said.
After the game, she told the Lady Wildcats: “I first asked them how they felt about the game, and they began to tell
me how they made errors, pitching and so on, but I said, ‘Let’s focus on the good in the game. I want to carry the positive of the game into the rest of the season, and I want to build off of what was positive, and we can go and work on what we messed up on.’
“I don’t want this to be focused on all the things we did wrong, I want to focus on all the things we did right and how we never hung our heads. If we carry that throughout the season, we’re going to win games.”
Andrews will head to Hiwassee Dam at 4:30 p.m. Friday to take on the in-county rival.