No. 3 Western Alamance gets best of No. 2 Lady Scots in 4th round

LAURINBURG — Last year in the second round of the NCHSAA 3A East playoffs, the Lady Scots were eliminated by Western Alamance by a final of 2-1.

On Friday night, in a rematch of the two teams in the fourth round, the same outcome would occur.

A seven-run third inning from the No. 3 Western Alamance Warriors (20-3) would break the score open and be too much for the No. 2 Lady Scots softball team (20-4) to come back from, as they fell 12-0 and were exited from the playoffs.

“I’m still proud of these girls,” Lady Scots head coach Adam Romaine said. “Preseason, coming in with our expectations of knowing what we had to rebuild and refocus and find some girls to play some positions that we needed to fill and some girls stepping into positions they’ve never played before this year, they did a wonderful job. I can’t ask nothing better from these girls. And to push this far to the fourth round, it’s just icing on the cake right now.”

After two scoreless innings, the Warriors took a 4-0 lead in the third on a Payton Rainey 3-RBI double that brought in Lela Kate Baker, Andrea Bryant, and Ryan Justice, and a Taylor Apple double that sent Rainey home from second; Western Alamance made it 7-0 when Kate Baker doubled to help Kayde Moore, Carley Minter, and Makena Harper score.

Avery Stutts was also relieved in the circle by Sydnee Dial in the same inning, something that Romaine said wasn’t because of Stutts’ pitching.

“She hit her spots,” Romaine said. “When I came out there, she said, ‘coach, they’re just hitting.’ She was putting the ball up off the plate and she mentioned that she just took the ball backside.”

The Lady Scots were left with the bases loaded in the bottom of the second and third innings and had runners stranded on first and second in the fourth. They also left the bags loaded in the seventh and had a total of 12 runners left on base.

Romaine said it’s “been our Achilles heal off and on during the season.”

“We talked about we’ve got to learn and go back to work the next day,” Romaine said. “But there’s no next day now about being able to score those runners when we got into scoring position. With a good pitcher like Apple, when you get her on her back end, you’ve got to at least chip away and get a run here, run there. But we just couldn’t do it tonight.”

The Warriors added a run to their lead in the fifth after Kate Baker singled to bring in Jillian Brunton from third; an RBI single from Apple in the sixth scored Justice from second to bring their lead to 9-0. The Warriors put up there final trio of runs in the seventh on a Justice 3-RBI double that scored Kara Alday, Kate Baker, and Bryant.

“We just couldn’t make our points when we needed to,” Romaine said. “They’re (Western Alamance) a good hitting team, I’m not taking nothing away from Western Alamance. They were a tough team last year so I knew they were gonna be a great team; Apple’s a great pitcher.”

Apple, an East Carolina University commit who pitched back-to-back perfect games in the first two rounds of the playoffs and a no-hitter in the third round, earned the win, allowing four hits with seven walks and 14 strikeouts in a complete game.

Rainey led the Warriors with three hits while Kate Baker had a team-high four RBIs.

Stutts suffered the loss for Scotland, allowing seven earned runs on six hits with four walks and three strikeouts in 3 2/3 innings pitched; Dial allowed five earned runs on six hits with one walk and five strikeouts in 3 1/3 innings pitched.

Addison Johnson tallied two hits for the Lady Scots and Natalie Smith and Carleigh McKeithan had one each.

The fourth round was the furthest the Lady Scots have been in the playoffs since 2013, when they were also eliminated in that round after a 5-0 loss against West Johnston.