Lady Vikes win on senior day
Published 11:11 am Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Chasity Hearn had a pair of triples to drive in five runs and lead Warren Central to an easy 14-2 senior day win over Ridgeland Tuesday at Lucy Young Field.
The Lady Vikes, now 12-11, will close out their regular season on Thursday at Cleveland. WC coach Dana McGivney hopes the meeting with the Lady Wildcats, who have won a pair of state titles in Class 4A over the past five years, will help prime her team for the 6A playoffs that begin April 29-30.
“We’re looking for a good playoff tuneup with Cleveland,” McGivney said. “David (Price) called me and I jumped at the chance to play them. We’ve got Madison Central a week from Friday for the playoffs. I hope we can build off today. We have to be able to cut down on our defensive errors.”
Hearn highlighted a seven-run second inning with her two-run triple and then closed the game in the fifth inning with a walk-off triple to left that cleared the bases.
“I think we did pretty good today,” Hearn said. “If we can cut down on our errors on defense and hit the ball more consistently, I think we can beat them (Madison Central).”
Ridgeland (2-16) provided little resistance and were unable to spoil senior Chelsea Worley’s last regular-season home game. Worley tossed three scoreless innings of no-hit ball to grab the win. She said the Lady Vikes have been able to come back from a recent slide when they dropped seven straight games to go from 9-4 to 9-11.
“We got on a bad streak there,” Worley said. “We made too many errors and didn’t hit the ball well. Today was a good day.”
Ridgeland managed two runs in the top of the fifth against reliever Megan McCullough. The Lady Titans got their only hits of the game in that inning from Natalie Erwin and Olivia Wilson. Two WC errors also helped out.
The Lady Vikes came back with Alexis Patterson and Kendall Parker drawing one-out walks. Pinch-hitter Lexie Burleigh bunted to score Patterson and Parker came in on Katie Busby’s bunt hit.
Walks to Krista Cortezie and Skyler Blades loaded the bases for Hearn, who responded with a rap to left-center to end the game by run-rule.
Busby finished with two hits and three runs scored. Parker had a double and two runs scored while Karley Hinson had an RBI single to start the second inning rally.