Lady Bears use big fifth inning to ram through Lady Raiders

WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — It’s not often that pitchers, in softball or baseball, are two-way players. In the case of Jacy Harrelson, it’s clear she broke that mold.

In Thursday night’s game against the West Laurens Lady Raiders she threw 12 strikeouts and hit a two-run home run to lift the Houston County Lady Bears to the win, 5-2.

After her performance, head coach April Collins had nothing but praise for the senior.

“She’s a huge key player, not only with her abilities but her leadership as well,” Collins said. “Very thankful to have her on our team to make things happen and be a Bear. I’m glad we have her. She did really well today. I think she only had two hits and she had 12 strikeouts in seven innings. Really proud of her.”

Harrelson went three-up-three-down in the first, gave up a double in the second, and after two outs West Laurens hit a RBI single that just barely counted as the ball was overthrown to first base.

After West Laurens took the 1-0, Harrelson ended the inning with a strikeout and gave her offense a chance to even the score.

Unfortunately, the offense just couldn’t get started.

There was the occasional single, but every other ball seemed to go straight to an infielder for an easy throw to first base or straight into an outfielder’s glove.

Still, Harrelson and the defense remained steady and only saw three batters in the third, fourth and fifth inning.

In the bottom of the fifth, the offense finally gained some traction, as Ansleigh Darby found the gap and sent a ball into left field to get on base.

Directly after that, Harrelson hit her two-run homer over the left field fence and the scoreboard to give the Lady Bears a 2-1 lead with no outs.

Kinley Snider, Claire McArthur and Abbie Havard all hit singles before Hayley McElroy hit a deep ball to center field that was helped over the fence by West Laurens’ outfielder to put the Lady Bears up 5-1.

The offense looked completely different in the fifth than the rest of the game, and Collins attributed that to the dugout picking up the intensity.

“One of our slogans this year is, ‘Get on the bus.’ We ride the energy bus,” Collins said. “They just picked up the intensity to where we should be the whole game. They finally realized that’s what we had to do, and that just helped build and get things happening.”

West Laurens scored one more run in the sixth on a home run over the left field fence, but the batter after became Harrelson’s final strikeout.

Though the Lady Bears came out victorious, the West Laurens defense gave them a challenge, which is to be expected from the reigning 4A state champs.

“I always enjoy playing West Laurens, they’re a great team…[they] play really good defense. I think my team in the end proved that they could win today’s game,” Collins said. “It took us a second. It took us a second to get going, but if we want to beat better teams we can’t take a second, we gotta go. Overall, I’m happy we won, but we gotta play better next time.”

“The offense did take five innings to get going, but they were able to pull it out thanks to the wiggle room the defense gave them.

Harrelson did a phenomenal job on the mound, and even when West Laurens put the ball in play the defense was there to back her up and keep them out of scoring position.

“[The] defense is doing really well. We’ve been having to challenge them at practice because I feel like things are just getting too easy for them,” Collins said. “We did let some errors slip up tonight, and that did cause the team to kind of get down on ourselves. Overall I’m just proud of our defense, we just can’t sit back and be complacent, and that’s kind of where we were at tonight. Overall I’m really proud of how far they’ve grown, [some of the girls] are three year starters. It’s good to see how much they’ve improved.”

The Lady Bears are back in action next week at home against Lee County on Tuesday, Aug. 22.

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