The Oak Grove Lady Warriors are a young team, but most of the players were a part of last season’s early playoff exit. A year older, Oak Grove has posted an 18-2 overall record and it earned a first-round bye in the 6A playoffs after sweeping Region 5-6A play.
“We’ve played really good defense all year, and for the most part, we’ve gotten the pitching” Oak Grove coach Gary Ivy said. “We’ve only had one game where we didn’t get good pitching, and that was one of the two losses. This time of the year, you better be doing it all right.”
Statistically, the Lady Warriors are doing well all three phases of the game right. They’re hitting .320 as a team, fielding the ball at a .941 clip and they have a team earned run average of 1.97.
The Lady Warriors close out the regular season with one non-region contest against Ocean Springs Thursday at home. Ivy wants to see his Lady Warriors hone in on the mental side of the things better before his team plays again next week in the postseason.
“We have to have a more aggressive approach offensively at the plate,” he said. “We’re a little bit too aggressive on base. We are where I thought we could be, but we have a lot of room for improvement. If we can make those strides, the sky is the limit.”
A perfect example of how Oak Grove’s season is going came Monday night in a 6-4 win over St. Patrick. After leaving the bases loaded twice in a low-scoring game, the Lady Warriors gave up a 3-2 lead in the top of the seventh inning. St. Patrick jumped up 4-3 entering the bottom half of the final inning, but Oak Grove freshman Hannah Picazo belted a three-run home run for the walk-off win.
Win or lose, Monday’s game against St. Patrick (13-5) could only help in the playoffs. The mental battle of leaving runners on base for most of the game, then having to fight back in the bottom of the seventh will only benefit the players.
“They have a really good hitting team, so it was a good test for us,” Ivy said. “Early on, we weren’t doing what we needed to do and we left way too many people on base. Going forward from here, we can’t do that. For as young as we, you expect some letdowns from time to time, but we just seem to be playing hard enough to get it done.”
Picazo is one of a handful of younger players who have helped the Lady Warriors to a memorable season. Sophomore Alex Perren leads the offense with a .452 batting average, sophomore Ashja Walker also hits in the .400s with 20 stolen bases and eighth-grader Ryanne Hornsby has a 1.70 ERA in 86.1 innings in the circle.
“(Hornsby) is the real deal,” Ivy said. “I’ve been watching her for a couple of years now play summer ball, and she got a taste of it in the playoffs last year. She believes that she can go out there and get it done, and that’s a big part of it.”
Senior Umayah Harvey provides senior leadership with a .444 batting average, and junior Corinthians Stewart is hitting .379 with 14 stolen bases.
The playoffs weren’t kind to the young Oak Grove team last season. After losing the tiebreaker to Petal for the region crown, Oak Grove beat Gulfport in the first game of the first round, best-of-three series, but it dropped the final two games of the series.
Ivy hopes his players have learned from the painful experience, though.
“I hope so because a lot of these sophomores were starting as freshmen and went through that,” he said. “We’re probably on the same par pitching wise as we were last year, but it’s just a younger pitcher. I believe we have the talent, and it’s like what I told them (Monday), are we mentally tough enough? When it’s crunch time, can we perform?”
Oak Grove’s quest for its first state championship since 2013 begins Tuesday, April 24, but it won’t find out its opponent until the conclusion of the first round Saturday. Even the first round matchup isn’t set as of Tuesday afternoon.
