Fayetteville-Perry High School’s Izabella Waddle makes contact during an at-bat in a game this month against Eastern Brown High School at the Eastern Brown field – the final game before the playoffs for both teams. The Lady Rockets would go on to a section championship while the Lady Warriors would fall one win short.
Before the high school softball season started this spring, Shawna Slack and Ken Waddle listed the usual positives regarding their teams.
Both Slack’s Georgetown High School Lady G-Men and Waddle’s Fayetteville-Perry Lady Rockets were coming off section championships and district runner-up finishes in 2022, both coaches said. Expectations were high, they added.
And so, now that the season has ended for both teams, 2023 could definitely be deemed a success for the programs, with section championships for the two.
And it could have been a lot more, particularly for the Lady G-Men.
In Southwest Division III section/district tournament play, Georgetown won its first two games, 10-2 over East Clinton on May 8 and 7-2 over Madison on May 10 before losing a thriller to Clermont Northeastern, 16-13, in eight innings on May 15.
The Lady G-Men led 13-10 after five innings, but Clermont Northeastern scored once in the sixth and twice in the seventh to force extra innings, then delivered a three-run home run in the eighth for the win, denying the Lady G-Men of a spot in the district final.
Clermont Northeastern, which finished first in the Southern Buckeye Athletic and Academic Conference National Division with an 11-1 record – 20-6 overall – during the regular season, would lose in the district championship. Georgetown had finished fourth in the National Division at 6-7 (14-11 overall) during the regular season before making its playoff run.
“The CNE game, we should have won, plain and simple,” Slack said. “We should have won that game before the eighth inning. But we didn’t and we have to find the lesson in the heartbreak so that we can grow as a team and come back next year, stronger.”
Still, it marked another successful season, and the team’s third consecutive section championship under Slack.
“We still had a very successful season, finishing 14-11 with a sectional title,” Slack said. “There is no shame in that. I am proud of the growth I have seen from my underclassmen, and I am proud of my seniors who left it all on the field.”
In Southwest Division IV, Fayetteville-Perry received a bye, then defeated area Brown County foe Ripley-Union-Lewis-Huntington, 10-0, in five innings on May 11 for its section championship before falling to Southeastern, 10-0, in five innings May 17. Southeastern, too, would then go on to fall in the district final.
Also in Southwest action involving an area Brown County team, in Division I, Western Brown High School defeated Anderson, 9-1, in the first round May 8 before falling to Mason, 7-1, in the second round May 10.
And in Southeast Division III, Eastern Brown High School, the Southern Hills Athletic Conference Division I regular season champ, defeated Oak Hill 10-0 in the first round May 9 before falling to McDermott Northwest 10-0 in the second round May 11.