PURVIS – A “rollercoaster game” puts it mildly as the Region 7-4A opener between Purvis and Poplarville featured 31 hits, 10 errors, a 7-run comeback, an unthinkable inside-the-park home run and extra innings that ended in a 13-12 walk-off win for the Lady Tornados on Tuesday night.
On the misty and cold night at Purvis’ softball field, the Lady Hornets jumped out to a 7-0 lead. The Lady Tornados’ starting pitcher Andee Robertson and her young defense that included three middle schoolers at first appeared unable to do anything right.
In the first inning, Robertson faced a bases loaded situation after giving up a pair of runs with her defense, not helping her cause by committing two errors. Hannah Lower stepped in, but Poplarvile (3-7, 0-1) delivered back-to-back 2-run RBI singles with another stealing home before the inning ended.
“I felt like we could hit their pitcher, but at that point, I’m not thinking about winning,” Purvis coach David Entrekin said. “I’m thinking about stopping the bleeding and just chipping away, and then hopefully we can catch a couple of breaks.
“I didn’t feel good after trailing 7-0. Poplarville has some good hitters too. Our girls showed up, but that game could have gone either way.”
From the start, Entricken’s plan to chip away slowly followed and began with Robertson driving in Purvis’ first run with an RBI double. Purvis (7-2, 1-0) scored in six of the eight innings played and recorded a hit in every inning.
“I didn’t do that great in the circle; I came in and made an error at second, and I knew I had to pick up the slack somewhere,” said Robertson, who finished the game 4-for-4 with three RBIs. “I just came out of basketball a couple of weeks ago. I’ve had a hard time seeing the ball, but I think today it just clicked. When I was hitting in the batting cage earlier, I was hitting really well. I thought maybe it’ll click tonight, and it did.”
Then in the bottom of the second, Purvis found itself back in the game with Poplarville committing two errors that scored runs for the Lady Tornados. Elise Jackson hit an RBI triple, with Robertson hitting another RBI double to cut the deficit to 7-5.
While Purvis’ bats didn’t cool off, Lower began to settle in after the first inning. Lower only gave up two more earned runs in the rest of her outing. According to Lower, she kept her mental approach simple when she took over in the first and quickly put the early hole behind.
“(I thought just) get out of the inning and do the best that I can and pitch it to where my team can help me out,” Lower said. “You have to have confidence in your defense. We started off badly, but we came back.
“You have to have a clear mind. If you don’t, then you are just going to be in your head the entire game.”
In her 7.2 innings pitched, she allowed four earned runs off 12 hits and struck out four batters while walking one.
“She’s great,” Robertson said. “There is no one else I can trust in that circle as I have with her. I’ve been playing varsity since my eighth-grade year, and there is not a pitcher that I feel better having in the circle than her.
“I knew that no matter what I was doing that she had our back, and we had to have her back.”
Despite Lower’s effort, Purvis’ defense struggled with the Lady Tornados totaling seven errors and committing at least one error in six of the games’ eight innings.
Poplarville scored a run in the second, third and fourth innings, with two of those scores occurring due to errors by Purvis that extended the Lady Hornets’ lead to 10-5.
Yet Purvis scored three runs in the bottom of the fourth with an RBI single by Robertson, while an error and a wild pitch scored the other two runs. The Lady Tornados then took the lead in the sixth after Lillie Hales hit a two-run RBI double, and Hattie Tynes delivered the go-ahead run with an RBI single.
Holding an 11-10 lead at the top of the seven, Purvis looked to put the game away. However, an error put a runner on base with one out. One batter later, the unthinkable happened with Poplarville’s Kaitlynn Schonewitz hitting a hard ball to right field. Purvis’ right fielder Ava Williford misplayed it, and the Lady Tornados came up with a 2-run, two-out inside the park home run to take a 12-11 lead. While Entrekin was upset over missing on the win, his immediate concern was his pitching situation.
“I knew she hit a rocket,” Entrekin said. “It would have been a very tough play for Ava out in right field. My heart sunk when it went over there (but at that point), Hannah had thrown a lot of pitches. At the end of the day, I don’t want to overthrow my pitcher, but we have a lot of young girls underneath Hannah. I was hoping we could get this done quick because I can’t let Hannah hurt herself.”
Purvis managed to tie the game and send it to extra innings with Alley Young hitting an RBI single. The Lady Tornados held off the Lady Hornets in the top of the eighth to set up Hattie Tynes driving in the game-winning run against her cousin Lily Tynes, who was Poplarville’s pitcher to close the game.
“Hattie has been really clutch this year,” Entrekin said. It was really clutch because her cousin was the one pitching there at the end.
“We had some learning curve there, and our youth kind of showed. We had a seventh-grader at third base and an eighth-grader at shortstop and they will be good players. I’m hoping we can learn from this game.”
