PikeView’s freshman hurler struck out 13 Cavaliers without yielding a single earned run and notched the walk-off two-run double in the bottom of the seventh to deliver the Panthers a 4-3 win over West in Gardner Tuesday.
Maddox, who yielded a two-out single to Brilee Redden in the sixth inning and allowed her to score the go-ahead run on a wild pitch, more than made up for her lone blemish with a pressure-packed two-out two-strike double to the opposite field in right.
The ball rolled to the fence after getting down, scoring Mia May for the tying run and Zoey Tupper for the winning run.
It was a perfect cap for a day that saw the freshman reach base three times in addition to her exploits in the circle.
“I knew the game was kind of riding on me,” Maddox said. “There was two outs and two strikes and I had to swing at anything close. I really like low pitches and it was right where I wanted it so I just poked it to the outfield.”
For West it was the second consecutive game against an ace hurler after walking away with a 2-0 victory against Beckley all-state pitcher Aubrey Smallwood on Monday. The negative similarity that carried over from that game was the number of times the Cavaliers struck out
After going down 16 times against Smallwood, Maddox found success against a talented West lineup with 13 Ks, holding the Cavs to three hits.
“We’re in that situation where we played Saturday, Monday, today and tomorrow and we’re averaging like 13 Ks a game,” West head coach Stephen Price said. “You still got to put the ball in play. I think at this point a lot of it is in our heads because we have girls that have faced this pitching their whole life and now, it’s a struggle.”
Putting the ball in play aided the Cavs who scored their first run after Maddie Fields reached on a leadoff error, stole second and eventually scored on a passed ball in an inning that saw Maddox fan the next three batters in order. The same formula worked again in the next frame where Diana Porter scored on another passed ball after a leadoff single but the Panthers were able to recover and cut down an important run at the plate to close the inning.
“That was a big one,” PikeView head coach Steve Compton said. “It seemed like every time they got somebody to third, they got them in. But we just kept playing. That’s the big thing with this team. We’ll get down and it doesn’t affect them. They just keep playing and somehow squeaked it out.”
The third frame was where the hosts began to find their groove at the plate.
A pair of leadoff walks to Cora Belcher and Tupper set the stage for the middle of the lineup. Lauren Lambert drove the first PikeView run home with a 6-3 groundout before Emma Compton doubled with two outs to plate Tupper.
The offense slowed until the sixth where Redden’s two-out single eventually led to 3-2 lead for the Cavs. Faced with a similar situation in the seventh, the Panthers avoided the same fate when they cut down a runner at second the send the game to the bottom of the seventh.
May, batting seventh, started the rally with a leadoff walk before Tupper’s single set the scene for Maddox.
“She’s game smart and really savvy, Compton said. “She knew what she had to do. She just came up big for us.”
The victory is the second signature one in a row for the Panthers who upended Greenbrier East 6-2 in Fairlea on Monday. For West the game was another challenge in a gauntlet with the Cavaliers heading to Midland Trail on Wednesday to face another first team all-state pitcher in Madison Rader.
“We’ve got to see this (pitching),” Price said. “I added some teams, and the schedule was already tough, but I added some teams that were tougher. We don’t have a whole lot of gimmes. We’ve got to see this. Our goal is to get to Charleston like everybody and if we get to Charleston we’re going to see pitching just like that and hopefully that will pay off in the end. ”
