SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Within 30 minutes of a four-run loss to Winfield to start state tournament play, Herbert Hoover was back at it facing elimination against Bluefield at The Rock.
The Huskies put their resiliency on display early with offensive mettle, scoring three runs with two outs in the opening frame and getting by the Beavers 7-4 to prolong their season.
“They didn’t even have time to think about what happened before,” Huskies’ head coach Missy Smith said. “We just knew it was a new game, let’s go and it worked out. We scored three runs with two outs in the first inning and anytime we can score two-out runs, that’s huge.”
The result allows Herbert Hoover (27-4) to face Keyser in another elimination game Thursday with the winner moving on to battle Winfield in the championship.
Due to a 1 hour lightning delay in the seventh inning of their matchup with the Generals, the Huskies were afforded little time between that disappointing result and a season-saving victory.
“I wish they didn’t think very much at all. I tell them this all the time — they’re good softball players and terrible thinkers,” Smith said. “It worked out for us today and if they think a little less and play a little more, maybe we’d be better off.”
Herbert Hoover managed the three-first inning runs, first scoring on Laila Varney’s double and later on singles by Lexi Kennedy and Addi Chapman, and Hoover added another in the second on Sadi Wehrle’s run-scoring single to lead, 4-0.
Varney threw three scoreless innings to start, before giving way to Hannah Shamblin with Varney having gone the distance earlier in the day against Winfield.
“Much different from what we saw in the first game and much different from what we saw a lot of the season,” Bluefield coach Justin Hall said of Varney. “The last time we saw that velocity with that rise ball is probably when we were at Myrtle Beach. Hand it to her. She kept us off balance with that and we had hard time laying off of it.”
The Beavers (17-7) got to Shamblin and scored their first run on a fielder’s choice, but did minimal damage after having the bases loaded with no outs, with the inning ending on a line drive double play.
Hoover carried that momentum over to the bottom of the frame and loaded the bases with one out, before Kennedy ripped a single up the middle to score a pair for a 6-1 lead.
However, Bluefield, which battle back from an eight-run deficit earlier Wednesday in a 17-14 loss to the Golden Tornado, managed three fifth-inning runs off Shamblin to pull to within a pair.
That inning featured singles from Abigail Matthews, Abigail Richardson and Taylor Maybry, before Madison Lawson cleared the bases with a double to center.
But Varney came back in to pitch and the Beavers could never solve her, striking out 10 times without a hit over five scoreless frames.
“We were fortunate to get up 6-1 and able to give her a little bit of a break, so she was fresh to come back in and finish at the end,” Smith said.
After Varney struck out the side in the sixth, the Huskies added a sixth-inning insurance run on Bella Hass’ single, which brought home Chapman, who had doubled an at bat earlier.
Shamblin finished 3-fro-3 and Kennedy and Chapman added two hits apiece, while Kennedy drove in three runs to match Lawson for game-high honors.
Bluefield pitcher Izzy Smith walked seven and struck out four over six innings.
“Good teams that have pitchers with varying degrees of speed have the luxury of doing that to you and if we see a big difference in velocity from game to game, it takes us one or one and a half times through the lineup and then we can explode,” Hall said. “We didn’t really get that opportunity today because of the way they were able to switch them in and out.”