The Lady Scots softball team will battle the Rockingham County Cougars in a best of three series over the weekend for a 3A state championship. The two teams have a combined season record of 55-2 heading into their matchup and haven’t lost since their respective second games of the season.
File Photo
GREENSBORO —In case you missed it, the Lady Scots softball team (29-1) punched their ticket to the 3A state championship series last week and will battle the Rockingham County Cougars at UNCG Softball Stadium this Friday and Saturday in a best of three series. One of these teams is set to lose more games over Friday and Saturday than they have all season, as Rockingham County has lost just one game this year and carries a 26-1 overall record into the championship round.
Who are the Cougars and what will it take for Scotland to beat them twice over a two-day span to claim a state title? Here’s a breakdown of Rockingham County’s season by the numbers and how they’ve made it as far in the state playoffs as the Scots have:
Season record and run differential, two red hot teams set to collide:
As mentioned above, the Cougars are eerily similar to the Scots in season record and path, having not been beaten since their second game of the season on March 6, a 15-4 loss at the hands of McMichael. They have rattled off 25 consecutive wins since then and are 26-1 overall with a perfect 12-0 mark against Mid-State 3A opponents entering their series with the Scots.
Rockingham County has scored a total of 287 runs this season (10.6 per game) while allowing 32 runs defensively (1.2 per game), good for a run differential of +255. Scotland for comparison has scored 288 runs this year (9.6 per game) while allowing just 13 (0.4 per game), good for a run differential of +275.
Playoff run, how the Cougars got here:
Like the Scots, the Cougars have had to survive five rounds of playoff action in order to make it to the state championship. They beat the No. 5 seeded Crest Chargers in two games of their Regionals series matchup by scores of 1-0 and 9-6 to punch their ticket at the same time Scotland did. As the No. 2 seed in the west region of the 3A bracket, the Cougars got matched up with No. 31 seeded Eastern Guilford in the first round and won 10-0 before taking down No. 15 Ledford 9-0, No. 7 Piedmont 11-1 and No. 3 Oak Grove 4-0 in the subsequent three rounds of the tournament.
Offensive leaders, Scots set to face a deep lineup:
Kennidy Kirby is the unquestioned leader of Rockingham County’s offense, holding the team lead in many major offensive statistics. Those include batting average (.562), on base percentage (.611), home runs (8), stolen bases (21), runs scored (51), hits (45), RBIs (40), slugging percentage (1.075) and triples (7).
Presley Rothe is second on the Cougars in batting average (.486), on base percentage (.537) and doubles (7) as well as third in hits (35) as well as stolen bases (8). Zoey Snead is another frequent member near the top of Rockingham County’s batting statistics, coming in second on the team in hits (38), runs scored (42), triples (5) and stolen bases (10) as well as third in batting average (.475), on base percentage (.533) and RBIs (29). Macey Hardy added six home runs and 34 RBIs this season, both of which were second on the team while leading the Cougars in doubles with nine and placing third in slugging percentage at .741.
Pitching, a battle of two of North Carolina’s best:
This series will feature two of the best pitchers in the state and two candidates for North Carolina high school softball player of the year in Avery Stutts and Ava Grace Pruitt (voting is open until June 8). The Cougars junior has been lights out all season, posting an ERA of 0.66, a perfect 26-0 win-loss record and 265 strikeouts (against 25 walks) across 127 innings of work. She has allowed just 12 earned runs this season while opposing batters have gotten a hit off of her just 9.1% of the time (.091 batting average); she has allowed just 38 hits this year.
Series schedule:
The series will begin on Friday night with Game 1 scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Game 2 will be on Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. with a Game 3 if necessary set for 8 p.m. on Saturday night. All games will take place at UNCG Softball Stadium in Greensboro.
The other state championship series that will take place in Greensboro is the 2A state title matchup between West Wilkes and North Lenoir. Game 1 of their series will take place on Friday night at 5 p.m. while Game 2 is on Saturday at 11 a.m. with a Game 3 (if necessary) set for 5 p.m. The 1A (Perquimans vs. Union Academy) and 4A (D. H. Conley vs. South Caldwell) state championship showdowns will take place over in Durham at Duke Softball Stadium.
More information about UNCG Softball Stadium, what items are prohibited in the venue and a program can be found on the softball championship page of the NCHSAA website. General public tickets will go on sale on Friday morning.
All statistics are from MaxPreps.