By By BRUCE HIXON – Sports Editor
It was still an abbreviated game, but not as quick as it could have been.
This was one time when longer was probably better for the T.R. Miller Lady Tigers softball team as they downed the host W.S. Neal Lady Blue Eagles 20-6 in five innings Tuesday.
T.R. Miller (6-3) led 15-0 and was one out away from a three-inning mercy rule victory when W.S. Neal scored four times to keep the game alive a couple of innings longer.
Tuesday's game was the first for the Lady Tigers in two weeks and precedes another one-week layoff.
The Lady Tigers could not have asked for a better top of the first inning where they scored 10 runs. It was also an inning that could not have gone any worse for W.S. Neal (0-11) where it made six of its nine errors on the day.
Fourteen T.R. Miller batters went to the plate in the opening inning although only four collected hits. Those four hits came from the top two spots in the lineup where leadoff batter Haley Rilling and number two hitter Leslie Nalty both had two singles. Five of the six errors W.S. Neal had in that inning came from its infield.
Rilling collected her third hit in just two innings in the second frame with an RBI triple that highlighted a three-run rally that made it 13-0.
The lead stood at 14-0 with two outs in the third when Brandi Kennedy came off the bench and lined an RBI single to put T.R. Miller in position to win the game on the three-inning mercy rule.
After they were blanked by starter Leigh Cooper in the first inning and Nalty in the second frame, the Lady Blue Eagles got to T.R. Miller's third pitcher, Rachel Bostic, for four runs in the bottom of the third to keep the game alive. W.S. Neal got bases loaded walks to Katie Lowery and April Jackson, and two more runs scored on wild pitches to make it 15-4.
Terri Lynne Peacock, who hit two homers over the wall in her junior season trip to East Brewton, went deep again in the top of the fourth inning with a three-run bomb that increased the lead to 18-4.
Even though T.R. Miller's lead stood at 20-4 in the bottom of the fifth, there was still an interesting goal for the Lady Tigers to go after in the bottom of the fifth.
Cooper, Nalty, Bostic, and finally Kennedy had a combined no-hitter until there were two outs when W.S. Neal's Jessica Madden spoiled it with an RBI single. Jessica Lambert followed with another RBI single that accounted for the final margin.
T.R. Miller gets its first look at another Area 1 opponent Tuesday when it hosts Clarke County at 5 p.m.
At W.S. Neal
T.R. Miller (10)32 32 - 20 9 1
W.S. Neal 004 02 – 6 2 9