GREENSBORO —The Lady Scots softball team dropped Game 1 of their 3A state championship series against the Rockingham County Cougars on Friday night at UNCG Softball Stadium by a score of 5-2. Scotland suffers their first loss since Feb. 28 and falls to 29-2 on the season with the defeat while Rockingham County picks up their 26th consecutive win and improves to 27-1 overall with the victory.

The Cougars picked up four of their runs in the top of the third inning and another one in the seventh while the Scots got one apiece in the bottom of the sixth and seventh frames. Rockingham County outhit Scotland 8-5 in the game while three errors were committed (two for the Scots and one for the Cougars).

Addison Ratley and Avery Stutts both went 1-3 at the plate and had an RBI apiece. Kinsey Hamilton led the team in hits with a 2-3 effort while Khloe Radford added a hit and went 1-3 with a run scored.

Stutts pitched all seven innings of the game, allowing five earned runs and striking out eight batters against one walk. She would throw 90 pitches (72 strikes) to 33 batters faced.

Head Coach Adam Romaine gave credit to the Cougars for making things difficult on the Scots defensively but thought they beat themselves with miscues in the field. He also thought Scotland left opportunities to score more runs out there and knows they need to come out with a different perspective for Saturday’s games.

“We gave this game away, we beat ourselves, I’m not taking nothing away from them they put the ball in play when they needed to and did things they had to do,” Romaine said. “We got to come out with a different mindset to play tomorrow, make our adjustments and win Games 2 and 3. We just got to do better 1-9 at the plate tomorrow night, we got to produce more runs.”

Games 2 and 3 (if necessary) will be played back at UNCG Softball Stadium on Saturday. Scotland must win Game 2, which will begin at 2 p.m., in order to force a decisive Game 3 on Saturday night. Game 3 is scheduled to be at 8 p.m.

In the 2A matchup (also at UNCG Softball Stadium), West Wilkes defeated North Lenoir in Game 1 by a score of 9-1. Game 2 of that series will be on Saturday morning at 11 a.m. with Game 3 (if necessary) set to have a 5 p.m. start time.