USJ softball splits DH with Friendship

Wednesday night’s Division II-A state quarterfinal doubleheader softball games between University School of Jackson and Friendship Christian School was a source of frustration for Lady Bruins head coach Joel Ayers but also a chance for the Lady Bruins to show what they could do.

The home team dropped the first game of the three-game series 8-7 and tied the series in the night cap 9-5.

Game 3 was after The Post’s press time at 4 p.m. on Thursday. The winner of that game will move on to the four-team double-elimination state tournament in Murfreesboro as part of Spring Fling next week.

The frustrating part on Wednesday night for Ayers wasn’t how dominant the Lady Bruins were for the majority of the 14 combined innings of the two games, but how they allowed a mistake or two in a couple of innings compound into something significant to allow the Lady Commanders to compete with them.

“In that first game, things were going well, and then the wheels came off,” Ayers said. “They start the inning with a couple of good hits. OK, tip your hat to them and move on, but we got into a situation where we were making errors and not acting like we wanted to be in the moment.”

The “couple of good hits” Ayers referred to were three consecutive doubles that bounced off the outfield fence for FCS. The first one ruined the perfect game USJ starting pitcher Emerson Fair had going through four innings. The next two each had an RBI to tie the game at 2-2.

The momentum totally flipped in favor of the Lady Commanders for that inning as they scored six more runs.

USJ got a run back in the bottom of the inning then mounted a comeback by scoring four runs in the bottom of the seventh with the tying run on third base with two outs, but an infield groundout ended the game and put USJ a loss away from elimination in the D2-A quarterfinal round.

Maddie Polk, Abbey Brown, EK Elrod, Taylar Schands and Ela Golden each had an RBI in the loss.

Ayers and assistant coach Brandon Polk had a talk with the Lady Bruins about staying mentally in the game and in the moment for every at-bat in the dugout and in the field.

That talk seemed to work.

The Lady Bruins came out in the second game playing similarly to how they played for most of the first, going into the top of the sixth inning up 8-0.

That changed when FCS’ Khloe Smith hit a grand slam to cut the lead in half. USJ added an insurance run in the bottom of the inning, and the Lady Commanders added another run in the top of the seventh before USJ got out of the game by tying the series.

Haylen Ayers had three RBIs from a home run to lead the Lady Bruins offensively, while Polk, Elrod, Schands each had one RBI in the win.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news