Lady Tornadoes show might against Lady Jackets

It wasn't an easy opener and the Starkville Lady Yellow Jackets knew it.

Starkville High School head softball coach Ronald Campbell had expressed to his team how dangerous the Philadelphia Lady Tornadoes were all week long and it was going to be a tough way to open the season.

The Lady Tornadoes, the defending Class 2A State champions in fast pitch, hit a pair of three-run home runs and defeated the Lady Jackets 16-6 to start the slow pitch season.

“I told my girls all week long and we were talking about who was coming in to play and they were the defending state champions in fast pitch, so be ready and I'm sure they are going to be pretty good in slow pitch,” Campbell said.

For three innings, Starkville was right there with Philadelphia.

The Lady Tornadoes jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the first inning, but the Lady Jackets gained a 3-1 advantage with three runs in the second.

After Philadelphia scored five runs in the top of the third, SHS came back with a pair of tallies to cut the margin back to 6-5.

That was as close as the Lady Jackets could get as the Lady Tornadoes exploded with seven runs in the fourth and three more in the seventh to put the game away.

“In slow pitch, you've got to make routine plays,” Campbell said. “We had a couple of innings where we didn't make the routine plays and they scored some runs. They came up and hit two three-run homers, so they had some big hits, but overall not bad for the first game.”

Kylie May and Kyler Reeves had a pair of hits each to lead Starkville's nine-hit attack. Aubree Montgomery, Roniyah Campbell, Brianne Locke, Tinihja Vaughn and Ally Barefield had one single each.

The Lady Jackets travel to Tupelo on Monday.