SOFTBALL: Indians slap Little Giants

FORT DEFIANCE — It took only took three things for Fort Defiance to move on to Thursday’s Southern Valley title game.

Jessica Hogle’s arm. The senior’s bat and one inning.

And it came in that order.

After sitting the Little Giants down in order, despite giving up a hit, in the first inning, Hogle’s 1-1 pop up dropped into right field, scored two runs and gave the righty all she would need en route to a 16-1 win over No. 4 Waynesboro.

“What do they call that again?” asked Fort coach Max Hill. “Helping yourself at the plate?”

She helped herself on the mound as well, fanning six Little Giants and freezing Waynesboro’s Heather Sutton with a change-up to start the second. Two batters later, she would give up her only blemish of the game when Norah Curtis slapped a single that drove in Jonquil Brown. That made the score 6-1.

“There’s so much chemistry on this team,” Hogle said, “I love my team.”

The win pushed Hogle’s record to 7-1 on the season and earned high marks from fellow senior and battery-mate Cinnamon Snyder.

“She was hitting her spots really nice,” Snyder said. “Then she started hitting the ball. Even better. She put the two together.”

The game, however, was over after the first inning.

After Hogle struck out two and Snyder threw out Kayla Bartley trying to steal in the opening inning, the Indian bats went to work. They never seemed to stop —with Hogle’s one-out single scoring Tiffany Lockridge and Courtney Allman. The Indians would add two more — one off a Payton Hill RBI single up the middle and another off a Waynesboro error in the infield — before the inning appeared to be over when Bartley got Snyder to chase a high fast ball. But the high pitch got past catcher Ashley Adkins and Snyder trucked down to first base.

Kendra Cash made the Giants pay, pushing a two-RBI single to right.

“We gave them three or four extra outs. You’re not going to win any ball games like that,” said Waynesboro coach John Hull. “But, hey, that’s a good softball team over there. You give a team extra outs and you can’t beat them.”

The Indians would bat around the order again in the third with the same results — six runs pushed across the plate — this time thanks mostly to three Waynesboro errors.

“Our error bug came back today,” Hull said.

After winning the final two games of the regular season 2-1 over Spotswood and Turner Ashby, Snyder said it wasn’t much of an adjustment getting the team back into Southern Valley blowout mode.

“We got to stay focused,” she said.

Hill concurred.

“They’ve got to stay focused because they got some talent coming their way,” he said.

The Indians will face Stuarts Draft, 6-1 winners over Rockbridge, in Thursday’s title game.