Tuesday night’s slow-pitch softball game between Newton County and Southeast Lauderdale stayed fairly close until the Lady Cougars’ final inning at the plate. 

With two outs in the top of the seventh, it looked as though the Lady Tigers would be heading into the bottom half only down three runs. Instead, leadoff batter Jada McDougle’s solo home run over the right field fence, her second of the evening, ignited a six-hit, six-run inning for the Lady Cougars in a 12-3 victory. 

McDougle, the center fielder, finished 3-for-4 with three runs and three RBIs. Her first homer, two-run shot in the fifth inning, extended the Lady Cougars lead to 6-3.  

“She’s God-given,” Newton County head coach Justin Chaney said. “She has so much ability it isn’t even funny, so it makes our job as coaches easy when you have kind of like a safety net there at leadoff.”

Third baseman Katelyn Gipson had two home runs of her own in a five-RBI performance for Newton County. Her first came in the second inning that drove in three runs to give her team a 4-0 lead, and her second came in the seventh when she sent a pitch into the outfield and rounded all bases for a two-run, inside-the-park home run to put the Lady Cougars up 9-3.

That led to left fielder Lauren Ivey, center fielder Lanie Phillips and catcher Maeli Ben all getting succeeding hits and scoring. 

Southeast Lauderdale earned all three of its runs in the third inning. Leadoff batter and pitcher Sha’kira Wilson hit a double with one out that drove in a run before she was batted in by right center fielder Lauren Pickett’s double. First baseman Taylor Williams sent her home on a single. Shortstop Kate Moulds put runners on first and second before her and Williams we left stranded.

Lady Tigers’ head coach Chris Harper said while his team stayed close throughout the contest, situational hitting was an issue.

“Knowing where runners are, knowing what we’re trying to do, we’ve still got to do a lot of work on that,” Harper said. “My take from it is, I don’t think the score indicates how good of a ballgame it was.”   

Harper said his players are improving and played well against a high-caliber opponent.

“We have better attitudes, we have better efforts and we competed,” he said. “I think Newton County is probably the best team right now in the state, and we competed with them for six innings.”

Chaney said Wilson gave his squad trouble on the mound, but they eventually found their breakthrough.  

“We can hit it pretty good, but she kind of kept us off-balanced,” Chaney said. “We just did a lot of unforced things early on, but we play hard. Towards the end we strung some hits together and had some different opportunities we capitalized on.”