Southampton continues to baffle Lady Trojans, sends New Kent to first defeat of season

New Kent's Haley Baker (left) attempts to turn a double play as Southampton's Kaylan Cales (7) slides into the base and teammate Taylor Yates (2) looks on.

Robb Johnson photo

For the past two years, New Kent’s Lady Trojans couldn’t figure out how to defeat the Southampton Lady Indians, falling to the Tri-Rivers District team in the playoffs in back-to-back years. And in the Apr. 10 regular season encounter, the unfortunate losing streak continued, resulting in New Kent’s record receiving their first blemish.

Despite an outstanding pitching performance by New Kent’s Gracie Ellis, Southampton took advantage of critical extra inning errors to emerge with a 4-0 victory over the Lady Trojans.

The pitching duel, along with great infield and outfield defense, did not provide a lot of offense in the contest. However, the Lady Trojans squandered chances in multiple innings. In the bottom of the second, New Kent’s Haley Cleaver double and advancement to third provided the hosts a chance to score. But back-to-back pop-ups by teammates Ellis and McKenna Mueller left the running stranded.

Similar fates occurred in the latter innings. Lady Trojan K.B. Snyder’s pop up became white noise to end the sixth inning without any runs. In the seventh frame, Mueller doubled and found her way to third base, only to see teammate Haley Hyndshaw go down on strikes as Southampton hurler Madi Wood kept the hosts in check.

In the top of the eighth inning, fatigue set in with the hosts. Overthrows to first base on routine plays and dropped balls in the outfield resulted in the Lady Indians pushing four runs across the plate in the top of the frame. In the bottom part of the frame, the hosts failed to muster any momentum to push any runs across the plate, resulting in Southampton’s win.

Lady Trojan head coach spoke about the loss and the team’s rare occurrence of failing to push a run across the plate.

“This was going to be a defensive battle and we knew that coming in,” she said. “They have an excelling pitcher and things didn’t go our way today, but we knew it was going to be a low-scoring game from the jump.

“As far as the errors in the last inning, we played an errorless game until that point,” Bates continued. “Southampton is an excelling team and it was just those few plays that could have made a difference in winning the game.”

New Kent holds a record of 5-1 on the season.