Lady Panthers figure it out in season opener

PERRY, Ga. — If you had some concerns about this year’s Perry High School Lady Panthers, you can put those to rest. A team that struggled on both sides of the mound in their scrimmages was nowhere to be found in Thursday night’s matchup against the Northside Lady Eagles, an 11-3 win for the Lady Panthers.

In their preseason action against Crawford County and Houston County they gave up five and 10 runs respectively in the first inning, and never managed to crawl back into those games.

Thursday was certainly a different story.

The Lady Eagles came off a win Wednesday night against Warner Robins in which they scored 10 runs, and they were eager to keep the bats going.

They did manage to squeak out two runs in the top of the first, but Lady Panthers’ Ella Dowd and her defense put a stop to that quickly.

From there they clawed their way back into the contest with one run in the second; and thanks to a RBI single from Lucy Layson, they tied it up at two in the third.

The fourth inning, somewhat unexpectedly, proved to be a game changer.

Neither team gained much momentum at the plate, in large part to good defensive play, but some big hits paired with miscues on the Lady Eagles’ defense helped the Lady Panthers pull ahead.

Cason Gentry started the party with a two-run homer straight over the center field fence that put them up 4-2.

Chloe Davey singled with a ball that hit the third base bag and popped straight into the air.

After stealing second base she moved to third on Ava Garrett’s sacrifice hit, but the Lady Eagles’ Morgan Lee overthrew third base trying to turn the double play and Davey scored, making it 5-2 Lady Panthers.

After Anna Dean’s score, Mackenzie Crumley sent another ball over the fence, and the Lady Panthers led 8-2.

Before long just about everyone got a chance to come across home plate and they led 10-2 at the end of the fourth inning.

The hits just seemed to snowball, or as head coach Daniel Wood described them: contagious.

“Hitting was contagious today,” he said. “Once Cason Gentry hit that two-run home run, from there on our offense rallied. We came up with another two-run home run from Mackenzie Crumley; [we just had] good hitting all the way through. It got the girls in the game, it got them excited. I kind of looked at today as almost like a boxing match. I feel like we lost the first three rounds but that fourth round we gave that punch that put them down. I’m very proud of the girls and the way they stayed in the game and fought.”

From there each team scored another run, but at the end of the fifth the game was mercy ruled and the Lady Panthers started their season 1-0.

Thursday’s game looked like a completely different team showed up to play. The defensive errors and cold bats from the scrimmages seemed to be all but gone.

Wood credits that some to practice, some to adjustments and some to eagerness from the girls.

“We had two rain-outs this week so that was two games that our varsity missed, so we did a really hard inter-squad yesterday,” Wood said. “We practiced, saw live pitching and just challenged our girls yesterday. We treated yesterday like a game we were playing with somebody else. We went hard, stopped and talked about things as it happened. We made the adjustments on the small things, and our girls were just eager to finally play today.”

So, after a few tries, the Lady Panthers’ season is off to a good start.

Next week Perry is back in action at Upton-Lee on Monday, Aug. 14 at 5:55 p.m. and against Dodge County at home on Tuesday, Aug. 15 at 6 p.m.

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