Lady Phoenix advance to 3A state tournament

Two down.

Three to go.

The countdown is still on for the Sonoraville High School softball team regarding how many wins they need to capture the GHSA AAA state championship after the Phoenix eliminated another one seed in Morgan County in two games Wednesday afternoon on a cool night at The Furnace.

It was supposed to be a best-of-three series, but for the second consecutive week the Phoenix didn’t need no stinkin’ third game, putting away their opponents in just two contests to keep their amazing season moving along.

And with the first 7-1 and then 9-2 verdicts over the Bulldogs, the Phoenix are now an outstanding 20 games above .500 and have all their eyes on a very serious prize.

And the first step towards earning that much-coveted prize begins 11 a.m. Thursday morning at the Elite Eight tournament in Columbus in a first-round game against Southeast Bulloch out of Brooklet.

The Southeast Bulloch Yellowjackets were the 3A Region 3 winners, going 7-0 in their league.

The Yellowjackets, who own a 19-4 overall record, reached this point in the season by defeating first Brantley County last week in two games and then eliminating White County Wednesday in two games, making them 4-0 so far in the playoffs, just like the Phoenix.

For the ladies in red-andwhite, Wednesday was a great day of softball as senior University of Tennessee-Chattanooga commit/senior pitcher Taylor Long was her usual back-breaking self in the circle, they played great defense and the bats came alive with a lot of different girls running around the bases like they were being chased.

With the club not having played in a week, Long was able to pitch both games, going 13 innings on the day and allowing just seven hits and three runs.

The school’s all-time strikeout leader also added to that total and reached the magical number of 900 career strikeouts for her time in high school.

In the first game on Wednesday, the Phoenix jumped right on Morgan County, scoring all their runs in the first three innings.

The home team scored three times in the first, two more in the second and their final two runs in the third to build a 7-0 lead before MC was able to plate its only run in the fifth.

Kelly Green was 2-for-3 at the plate with a double and two runs driven in while Erin Garland was 2-for-4 and scored a run and Long added two more hits. Taylor Martin walked three times and Molly Speach had a double and drove in a pair. Daelynn Cochran also had a double and an RBI.

Long threw six innings, allowing just two hits, one run and she struck out 12 hitters.

In the nightcap, Morgan County got out to a quick 2-0 lead with their lone runs in the bottom of the first inning, but the home team would follow that up by scoring in five of the last six frames.

The Phoenix cut their 2-0 deficit in half with a run in the top of second and took the lead with two runs in the third. They would pull away from MC with two more runs in the fifth, two in the sixth and the last two in the seventh.

Green and Martin, along with Taylor West and Olyvia Hopper, each had two hits for Sonoraville with Green hitting a home run and a double and collecting three RBI. Hopper had a triple and West also collected a triple and scored a run.

Garland, Speach, Harley Brown, and Ava Lambert each had hits and RBIs in the Game Two win and Cochran scored twice.

Long went seven innings and MC was able to get five hits off her, but she also registered 14 K’s to hit that 900 total mark.

The Phoenix are now 25-5 on the year.