There was fight and there was improvement, but Columbia couldn’t find a way to end a six-game skid in extra innings against rival Gainesville on Thursday night.
Instead, the Lady Tigers dropped their seventh straight as the Lady Hurricanes won a marathon District 3-5A game 4-3 in Lake City.
Cailin Fouraker scored the game-winning run in the top of the 10th when Ayanna Woodard sent a ball that ricocheted off of CHS third baseman Alexis Blair’s glove. That allowed Fouraker, who pinch hit, to score from second base after drawing a one-out walk earlier in the frame.
It was just the break the Class 5A MaxPreps No. 5 Lady Hurricanes (7-1) needed after squandering a 3-1 lead in the sixth inning. They also took advantage of a Columbia error to score one of their two runs in the fourth.
The Lady Tigers (2-7) entered the night with a fielding percentage just over .810, and although it was better against GHS, there’s still plenty of room for improvement for a young squad that features eight underclassmen and played without two injured starters in Sofia Arata and Emily Eadie.
“We didn’t take advantage of opportunities that we were given, but we can turn that around,” Columbia coach Trudy Andrews said. “We’ve got a young team and now they know, ‘Hey, we can do this.’ We’ve got to fix a few things and take advantage of opportunities that are given to us and good things will happen.”
Columbia had a few chances to do just that but just couldn’t string together enough timely hits aside from the sixth inning. That frame saw Hailey Bowmer hit a pinch-hit, two-RBI double to tie the game at 3-3 to force extras.
But the Lady Tigers left the bases loaded in the fourth and fifth innings, and they also had chances to win the game with a runner in scoring position in the seventh and the bags full again in the eighth.
Each time though, GHS pitcher Kyra Hornsby found a way to escape danger. Hornsby pitched a complete game, giving up zero earned runs on seven hits, six walks and two hit batters with a pair of strikeouts and also got some help in the first inning when Anissa Penniman was thrown out at the plate.
“We had a few times with people in scoring position and we left them stranded and you can’t do that, especially against a good team like that,” Andrews said.
Zoryana Hughes also went the distance in the circle for Columbia, giving up two earned runs on seven hits, five walks and one hit batter. The sophomore also scored the game’s first run when she reached home on a GHS error to put the Lady Tigers up 1-0 early.
But the Lady Hurricanes took a 2-1 lead in the fourth. After Woodard singled and Parris Wiggs walked, Woodard stole second and third on the same play and then scored on an errant throw to third base.
That then led to an RBI single by Brianna Biggs.
“We can’t do that. We’ve got to clean that up. That’s on us,” Andrews said. “But those are the learning things we can clean up and learn from.”
Gainesville then extended the lead to 3-1 when Wiggs stole home in the sixth. But after Bowmer gave Columbia new life in the bottom half of the inning, Hughes kept her team in the game by escaping the seventh and eighth with a runner on second before pitching a perfect ninth.
She just couldn’t get her offense to deliver one more run when she needed it most.
“She battled,” Andrews said of Hughes. “She didn’t get upset with her team. There’s opportunities when we did have some hiccups and she buckled down and kept doing her job.
“I like seeing she went the distance. I wish we would have gotten the win for her.”
UP NEXT
Columbia travels to Branford on Tuesday at 7 p.m.