South Charleston – It was deja vu for Greenbrier West again.
Facing Wahama for the second time in as many days with a spot in the Class A state championship on the line, West followed the same blueprint it did Wednesday and came away with the same result.
The Cavaliers yielded an early 2-0 lead, playing catchup the rest of the day in a season-ending 11-6 loss to the White Falcons Thursday morning in the Class A state tournament in Little Creek Park in South Charleston.
After taking a 3-0 lead in Wednesday’s matchup, West swung its bats to a 2-0 advantage with RBIs from Maddie Fields and Brooklyn Adkins but in what became a theme of the day, Wahama responded with three runs in the top of the second, fending off every West comeback charge.
Hampering those efforts was West’s offense which left six on base and saw two more runners eliminated on the base paths.
“I don’t know if we came up with many big two-out hits,” West head coach Stephen Price said. “We left second and third and the bases loaded a lot. You’ve got to have that in a big-time game and we didn’t and I don’t have an answer for it.”
Zoie Mayes, Audrey Reynolds and Fiona VanMatre collected RBI hits in the top of the second for a 3-2 Wahama lead, expanding the advantage to 4-2 in the top of the third on a groundout.
After securing the first out of the bottom of the frame, Wahama pitcher Elissa Hoffman found herself in trouble. Back-to-back singles were followed by a walk, loading the bases with one out for West. Adkins singled to score Brooke Patterson but a tag up on a fly out ultimately resulted in an inning-ending double play with the final out coming on a throw at to the plate.
But just as they did in the second inning, the White Falcons struck back, plating a pair of runs when Payton Staats hit a hard ground ball that rolled to the fence and failed to hit the cutoff man, allowing her to come all the way around and bring an extra run with her for a 6-3 advantage.
West answered back in the fifth when Maddie Fields tripled in Brilee Redden and later scored on a Preslee Treadway groundout to cut the deficit back to a run but Wahama went back to work with three more runs in the following half inning.
“I think I looked at them when we came in the bottom of the fifth and looked at them and said, ‘Girls we’re down three. We’ve scored a run an inning in a lot of games this year.'” Price said. “That’s a run an inning and we can score two in the last one to win this thing. I think we cut it to one and I’m like, well we’ve made that ground up then you go out the next two innings and give them a couple. If I go back and look at stats, leadoff walks kill you and if I go back and look, every leadoff we walked probably scored.”
Wahama tacked on two more runs in the seventh before West managed one in the bottom of the frame but the six-run deficit proved insurmountable.
The loss brought an end to a historic school year for girls athletics at West with the volleyball team winning a state title, the girls basketball advancing to the state semis and the softball team following suit en route to picking up its first state tournament win in program history.
“When you have good seniors in a small school that play multiple sports you should expect this,” Price said. “That’s what transpires in my 20-plus years in education. And we’ve got good leaders. I’ve got four seniors I’m going to miss. I’m blessed. I stepped into a job that was loaded with talent. I could’ve went through the motions and we’d have probably been here. I just wanted these girls to learn to be teammates.”
Redden and Fields finished with three hits each in the loss, earning all-tournament honors for their bodies of works across three games.
Treadway reached base three times while Adkins finished with three RBI.
