Calhoun start play Thursday in 5A state tournament
The Calhoun High School softball team will go for a 5A state championship and a little revenge as well, starting Thursday afternoon in the Elite Eight state tournament.
All season-long, through all the peaks and valleys, head Coach Diane Smith just wanted her team to stay laser-focused on thing — making sure they were a team that nobody wanted to play when the final days of October rolled around.
Well, the end of October is here and they are totally lethal and dangerous. And also playing thir best ball of the year.
“I’m so proud of my girls,” Smith said. “We’ve had some ups and downs, but I really believe in the last couple of weeks that we’ve started to put it all together. Our offense has been strong and we’ve had a lot of girls heading the ball and hitting the ball hard.
“Our defense has been very good. We’ve fielded the ball and caught the ball real well. We haven’t had any bad throws that have hurt us. And our pitching has been very good. Our pitchers have all done well. When it’s been their time,
“So I really feel like we’re playing our best right now, just like we were hoping we would be and now we’re looking forward to this weekend. The girls are fired up and I know we’re all looking forward to it. I wish we were on the field playing it right now.”
The Lady Yellow Jackets are also right where they want to be — back in Columbus with a chance to win their fourth state championship in nine years, starting with an 3 p.m. game Thursday morning against Loganville.
“I know the girls are very excited about going to state,” Smith said. “It’s a fun trip. It’s a business trip, but it’s a fun trip. And they make a big deal out of it and treat the girls like they’re very special. There’s an opening ceremony and just all kinds of things going on, so I think we are reaching our peak as a team and I feel like our girls are going to come out starting on Thursday and play their best softball of the year all the way through Saturday.”
They actually have already played Loganville, the top seed out of Region 8, this season having faced them back on Saturday, September 25th at the Grayson tournament. They lost 8-0 to the Red Devils, who enter the game with a 27-6 record and were 16-2 in their Region.
“We were missing a couple of players yhat and we didn’t play well, but Thursday is a new day and a new opportunity and we’ll be ready,” Smith said. “I know they’re a good team, but we’ll be ready.”
She said she knows the Red Devils have one very good pitcher and a good lineup, but she wouldn’t expect anything less from a team at the 5A state tournament.
While Calhoun is 4-0 in the playoffs with two-game sweeps of first Decatur and Veterans High School, Loganville is 5-1 through the first two rounds of the playoffs as they swept Villa Rica in the first round, but needed three games to eliminate Ola last week.
The Red Devils dropped the first game of the best-of-three series, 7-5, but came back to win Game Two 5 — 2 and then took the tiebreaker easily, 14-4.
She said besides having to play at their
best consistently for three consecutive days, there is one other big key to winning it all.
“I think maybe the most important thing is winning that first game,” Smith said. “You win that first game, it gives you momentum.
I think it helps everybody relax a little bit because you know you can do this.
“And I think winning that first game gives you a real positive feeling as a team. You’ve gotten over that first hurdle and have an idea of what it’s like to not only play, but to succeed in that environment and you take a step closer towards that ultimate goal of winning the championship. So they’re just a lot of positives in winning that first game at the state tournament.
“But if you don’t win that first game, you have to play a lot of games in a very short amount of time. You don’t get that rest. You don’t get that break. It just really leaves you playing catch-up from the get-go and put some more pressure on your team, so I think that very first game is incredibly important and I want my girls to understand that. And I think they do.”
And should the Lady Jackets win that first-round matchup, they could see a familiar Region 7 in the second round 9 p.m. Thursday night when they play the winner between Woodland and Starr’s Mill.
That is the same Woodland team Calhoun beat in two of three Region mates this year.
The ballclub from that group of four that wins its first two games, will then be off until 8 p.m. Friday night and need just a win in that game to reach Saturday’s Championship round.
If the lady jackets lose in that first round, they will need to play three times on Friday and early Saturday morning to reach that afternoon’s championship finals.
Calhoun is currently 21-13 on the year.