Second-year Ethel head fast-pitch softball coach Tyler McKinley is not pretending that his team's South State 1A Championship Series with Vardaman is not a big deal. But he is also not ready to concede that it is all about revenge for the two-game sweep the Lady Rams put on his team in the playoffs last year.
"My girls are really pumped up," McKinley said. "I wouldn't say we are excited; it's more like focused. We know we could have done better against them last year. We are happy to have the opportunity."
The series opens at Vardaman on Friday at 5:30 p.m., weather permitting, then comes to Ethel on Saturday for a 5 p.m. contest, followed by the deciding third game, if necessary.
Last year Vardaman took a pair of one-run wins over Ethel that saw the Lady Tigers commit a whopping 19 errors.
"We got into our own heads," McKinley said. "We hit the ball well, but we lost one of the games in the eighth inning and the other in the seventh."
The Lady Tigers came scarily close to not making it to there-match with Vardaman. First Ethel had to get past Hamilton, the defending MHSAA Class 1A State Championship.
After Hamilton took game 1-0, Ethel evened the score at one game each with a 5-1 win.
Then came game three that saw the Lady Tigers trailing 3-0 going into the seventh inning.
After one out, Ethel put together back-to-back hits followed by four consecutive walks to tie the game. "Their pitcher just blew up all of the sudden," McKinley said. Despite having the bases loaded and just one out, Ethel was not able to push the winning run across.That moved the game to the eighth inning and the International Tiebreaker rule that begins each half-inning with a team having a runner on second even before they begin to bat.
After holding Hamilton scoreless in the top of the eighth, McKinley knew exactly what he was going to ask his Lady Tigers to do.
"Last year we got beat because we never practiced it," he said. "This year we dedicated a whole practice to it and each of hour hitters got a chance to work in it."
The plan was simpler, the first batter of inning, Jessica Mitchell was to push bunt the ball and the runner on second (Sidney Rone) was to score on the play.
"The bunt was perfect," McKinley said. "The second baseman over ran the ball. She picked it up and threw it to first and she (Sidney) never let up. She came around to score and they never made a throw." On top of that, Mitchell beat the throw at first for an RBI singe.
In the 1-0 loss to Hamilton to open the series Rone smacked a double, while Mitchell pitched seven strong innings. In game two Rone had two doubles and two RBIs, while Maddie Odom had a two-run single.
Game three saw Mitchell earn the eight-inning win while striking out 11. Odom also had a pair of hits for the winners.
McKinley expects the series with Vardaman to be high-scoring. "Vardaman hits the ball really, really well," he said. "But I feel real confident in our pitching. We have the deepest pitching staff in 1A."
While hitting will be a key, McKinley said defense will likely tell the story. "Whoever makes the most errors is going to lose," he said. "They will be close games. We are going to make them score to beat us, we are going to try and apply pressure to their defense."
The Lady Tigers go into the series with a 16-8 record.
"To be honest, we won a few more games that I thought we might," McKinley said. "We kind of scheduled a little heavy because we knew we would run into Hamilton and Vardaman and I wanted them to have that experience."
The winner of the Ethel-Vardaman series will take on either Pine Grove, Myrtle or Smithville in a best-of-three series beginning on Thursday, April 9 on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. Myrtle and Smithville had to play a deceive game three in their series earlier in the week to earn a spot against Pine Grove for the 1A North title series.
