Oak Hill – A pair of two-out sins proved fatal for Midland Trail Tuesday.
A two-out walk followed by an error were the prelude to a five-run inning as James Monroe upended Midland Trial 10-7 in the Class AA Region 3, Section 2 tournament opener in Oak Hill.
The win sends the Mavericks to the winners bracket where they’ll face Liberty on Wednesday with a spot in Friday’s sectional title game on the line.
Bryleigh Thomas did everything in her power to lift the Mavericks to victory, homering twice and riving in six total runs.
Her first big-fly, a three-run shot in the third inning, gave James Monroe the lead at 4-3 while her second capped a disastrous fourth inning for Trail.
“I feel like we do decently hitting anywhere,” Thomas said. “But we’ve struggled hitting that ball in front of us. I think just knowing what this game was and how important it was, it made us truly understand we have to get that ball in front. You’ve got to watch it come out of their hand and hit the ball.”
Thomas’ first home run was crushing enough but her second was demoralizing. It followed a three-run double from teammate Chloe Bert that extended the lead at 7-3, with it hitting 9-3 on Thomas’ shot over the fence in center.
“She definitely played her game,” Trail head coach Candace Young said. “I’m not going to take anything away from her. We didn’t do our job, she did hers. That’s pretty much it.”
The job at hand was largely playing mistake-free ball and errors plagued them through the evening. The walk and error in the fourth preceded a string of three straight runners who touched every base.
“We talk about it, you gotta take advantage of it,” James Monroe head coach Greg Wickline said. “There was a walk after that and just when that type of stuff happens you gotta take advantage. The girls stepped up with two outs and we’ve been down this year and the girls have fought back and came back and somehow won a couple games. Today, two outs, they don’t stop, they just get in there and hack away.”
Even when Trail showed life, mental miscues were momentum killers.
After reaching on a leadoff error in the bottom of the fifth, the Patriots had a runner tagged out in a rundown between second and third for the first out after another batter reached on an error. A bunt attempt later in the inning led to another runner being tagged out between third and home for the second out, erasing a pair of potential runs.
“These were certainly untimely,” Young said. “It was more so not even our errors defensively, that got us, it was kind of our errors offensively – not being as aggressive as we showed on the basepaths, not committing on the basepaths. We had a situation (at third), the situation down there at the plate that kind of popped us and we weren’t decisive with our bag-running, and I think that got us.”
The middle innings were a reverse of a hot start for Trail which took advantage of a leadoff error and walk in the bottom of the first to power a three-run frame. The big play came when Raelyn Morris hit a ground ball through the infield that reached the fence, plating three runs.
That answered an RBI single from Thomas in the top half of the frame, giving the Patriots a 3-1 lead until Thomas drove in a combined five runs in her next two plate appearances.
“We worked on a couple things today before we came here,” James Monroe head coach Greg Wickline said. “I’ve been asking it out of (Thomas) for awhile. I told her yesterday, ‘Bryleigh, I had a vision you’re going to hit a three-run homer.’ So her (second) at bat today she hits a three-run home run shot pretty deep.”
Thomas finished 3-for-4 at the plate with 5 RBI, securing the win in the circle with nine strikeouts and no earned runs. Chloe Bert added the other four RBI on a pair of hits.
Jessi Mooney and Presley Walker had two hits each for Trail in the loss.
