Enterprise falls in Class I title series to Hamilton

Published 9:17 pm Saturday, October 21, 2017

RIDGELAND — Enterprise’s quest for a second state championship in slow-pitch softball came up short Saturday when the Lady Bulldogs were swept by Hamilton in the Class I championship series. 

The Lady Lions came from behind in both games for 11-5 and 12-5 victories.

Enterprise coach Davey Dewitt was blunt about his team’s performance: “That’s as badly as we have played all year,” he said. “Offensively, defensively, we didn’t deserve to be on this field. The stage was too big for us today.”

Poor defense and the inability to hit in the clutch hurt Enterprise, especially in the second game when the Lady Bulldogs committed six errors and failed to score in the third inning after getting runners at first and third with no outs. The same thing happened in the fifth inning when runners were at first and third with one out. Both innings ended with a ground ball double play.

“We had runners in scoring position five or six times and never took advantage of it.” Dewitt said. “We popped the ball up way too much. We didn’t hit the ball solidly.”

Enterprise lived by the home run ball throughout the season, but failed to hit any over the 300-foot fence at Freedom Ridge Park. Several drives by the Lady Bulldogs that would have been over the fence at their home field stayed in the ball park.

In the first game, Enteprise took a 5-2 lead with a four-run third, but failed to score the rest of the way. Hamilton won the game with a seven-run sixth as the first eight batters hit safely. The big hit was a grand slam by Anna Stahl, her third of the season.

Maycee Knight was the Lady Bulldogs’ leading hitter in the first game with two singles and a double. Hamilton’s 21-hit attack included three singles and a double by Faith Fontenot, a homer, two singles and a bases-loaded walk by Hannah Rooks and three singles by Caylin Ferraro, who made the defensive play of the game when she caught a long drive off the bat of Shawanda Gray while running into the outfield fence.

Enteprise took advantage of three Hamilton errors to jump out to a 5-0 lead in the first inning of Game 2. Haley Stockman, Gray and Knight had singles and Hannah Herrington a double. 

But the Lady Bulldogs were shut out the rest of the way while Hamilton scored two runs in the first, two in the second, three in the fourth, two in the fifth and three in the sixth. 

Enterprise managed only eight hits in the game, including three by Guy and two Herrington. Hamilton’s 13-hit attack included two doubles by Stahl and a homer and single by Victoria Harrison. Stahl came close to another grand slam with a bases-loaded ground rule double in the first that plated the Lady Lions’ first two runs.

It is the ninth state championship and second in a row for Hamilton, which won 1A last year before 1A and 2A were combined into Class I due to a dwindling number of schools playing slow-pitch.

“I knew it was going to tougher than it was in 1A last year,” said Bryan Loague, who has coached Hamilton to four state titles in the past six years. He added “We play the best teams in North Mississippi every year, so it doesn’t matter what class they put us in.”

Hamilton finishes 30-5, and Enterprise, which won its only state title in 2011, wrapped up its season at 28-9. The Lady Bulldogs won the South State championship with a sweep of Ethel and had scored 132 runs in the previous 10 playoff games.