Hannah-Pamplico softball rounding into form as state playoffs near

            Pamplico – Amber Knight has been waiting for this edition of the Hannah-Pamplico High School softball team to come into its own this season. She believes that may have started taking place on Monday.

           The Lady Raiders had one of their biggest offensive outputs of the season, picking up 14 hits on the way to a 16-5, 5-inning win over East Clarendon at the H-P field.

           Now It’s not as if Hannah-Pamplico has been struggling per se. The defending Class A state champion is 12-1 on the season following a 10-0 victory over Johnsonville on Tuesday and is ranked No. 1 in the latest High School Sports Report Class A poll. The Lady Raiders just found a different offensive gear against the Lady Wolverines, who are ranked ninth.

“This is the first game where I've seen them hit the ball 1 through 9 (in the batting order) like I know they can,” said Knight, the H-P head coach. “We just haven't really got rolling. We knew that we’ve got to get going with the bats. We’ve done a lot of work with the hitting.”

Knight is aware EC didn’t have its No. 1 pitcher in the circle in Laiklyn Gaskins, who limited her team to three runs in a 3-1 victory earlier in the season. East Clarendon head coach Jason Newsome didn’t want Hannah-Pamplico to get another look at Gaskins with the start of the state playoffs so close.

“There isn’t any coach who doesn't want them to see his No. 1 pitcher twice before we go into the playoffs,” said Newsome, whose team is 9-7 on the season. “There's a possibility that we run into them later.”

Still, Knight was pleased with the approach the Lady Raiders had in the batter’s box. That hasn’t been much of a problem for No. 2 hitter Jadan Lee. She went 3-for-4 with a triple, four runs batted in and two runs scored. She has an even .500 batting average on the season following the win over No. 7 Johnsonville. She has four doubles, six triples and four home runs among her 20 hits and has 26 runs batted in.

“Jadan has just been phenomenal this year,” Knight said.

She also sang the praises of Savannah Owens, who 2-for-2 with three runs and two RBI and owns a .375 batting average.. Karah Turner was 2-for-3 with three runs and two RBI, Payten Poston was 2-for-3 with three runs and an RBI, and Chloe Cooper was 2-for-4 with a double, a run and two RBI.

Kadence Poston smacked a 3-run homer, while Meredith Stone had a hit and scored two runs, and Isabella Davis had a hit and a run. The only H-P player who didn’t get a hit was No. 9 hitter Madison Rodgers, but she had an RBI and a sacrifice bunt.

        Stone is batting .312 after homering on Tuesday, Payten Poston is at .293 and Kadence Poston is at .281 with three homers. Cooper is also batting .281 while Davis is at .267 with a homer

Knight said this team is trying to separate itself from last year’s championship squad.

“At the beginning of the season, they were so worried about following up with what the other team had done,” she said. “I have a lot of the same girls on the team, but we talked about how you're not a continuation of the state champion. You are the 2024 Raiders, who also can be state champions, but we have to start over.”

The Lady Wolverines, who have already wrapped up the Region 6 title, actually got out to a 4-0 lead in the top of the first inning against starting pitcher Davis. EC loaded the bases with no outs without getting the ball out of the infield. Leadoff hitter Bailey Hicks reached on a swinging bunt single, Hayden White reached on an error on a sacrifice bunt, and Gaskins reached on an infield single.

It looked like Davis might get out of the inning without a blemish as she struck out the next two batters. However, another swinging bunt, this one by Whitney McElveen, scored Hicks to make it 1-0. Layke Jeffords did get one out of the infield, popping the gap in right-center field for a bases-clearing double to make it 4-0.

That lead didn’t hold up for long. Payten Poston led off with a single against Jeffords, a freshman who started in the circle for East Clarendon. Poston stole second base and scored on a single by Lee. Cooper’s double scored Lee before Davis walked and Stone reached on an error to load the bases. Owens delivered a 2-run single to tie the game at 4-4.

Turner had an RBI fielder’s choice and Rodgers had an RBI groundout to push the lead to three.

Davis settled in after the rocky first. She didn’t allow a hit over her final three innings and finished with 10 strikeouts. At one point, she had seven consecutive strikeouts.

Kadence Poston came on in the fifth and walked the first two batters she faced. One of them scored before she struck out the final three batters.

Poston and Davis have been a dominating force in the circle.

“We stress that we have a thing that no one else in the state has, and that's two phenomenal pitchers,” Knight said. “You've got Isabella and Kadence, who kind of work hand in hand. They're rolling. They both have phenomenal curveballs, they both have great changeups that both seem to be on for every game.”

Poston has worked 46 2/3 innings following her complete-game effort against Johnsonville. She had 105 strikeouts and a 0.45 earned run average while allowing just 18 hits and 11 walks. Davis has a 0.97 earned run average in 29 innings, striking out 53 while allowing 12 hits and nine walks.

“We're striking out about 80 percent of the batters we're seeing,” Knight said. “The outfielders and infielders joke with them saying, ‘Can you miss a spot where we can do something?’ They’re the workhorses of the team. They get everything done.”

Along with Jeffords, East Clarendon had eighth-grader Zoey Culick and seventh-grader Braelyn Locklear pitch. Newsome was happy with what he saw from the youngsters.

“Obviously they got touched up a little bit,” the first-year head coach said. “We're real happy with their performance tonight. They've got a lot of games to pitch in their futures. All of them performed above expectations.

“We (also) took the opportunity to get more of the kids in the game who have not played a lot of innings against this level of competition,” Newsome added. “The kids that were in are good players and needed to have the opportunity to play against this level of competition.”

           Though he wishes the record was better, Newsome believes East Clarendon is having a pretty good season.

“We’ve lost four games by one run, so we're a couple of bounces away from being 13-3,” he said. “There were some things early in the season we had to learn, they were adjusting to me, I was adjusting to them.

“We had to learn how to win close ball games, and we figured that out over the last couple of weeks, how to win close ball games. We're in a good spot right now. I think our best softball is still ahead of us. We played a lot of close games against a lot of good teams. Going into the season, if you told me we are where we are, I'd be pretty happy.”

As for Hannah-Pamplico, it has three Region 6 games remaining. It is in position to wrap up the title with a win over Lake View on Friday, which would give H-P its first region championship since 2005. Knight said that fact has motivated the Lady Raiders.

“I was worried about them being a little cocky, but they seem more driven and more, 'We want to win,' “ she said. These kids have never won a region title. We won everything else last year except for that (losing twice to Latta during the regular season before beating it twice to win the lower state tournament). Even though we think we’re in good shape in the region, they want to win it undefeated and go so far as not to give up any runs.”

Hannah-Pamplico has won all of its region games in shutout fashion, with nine of its wins coming in that manner. H-P has allowed just 14 runs this year.

“I think we're hitting our stride going into the playoffs,” Knight said. “At the plate, I feel more comfortable going into the playoffs than I did this time last year.

           “They want it. They want to go back. We lost a huge senior class, and they want to prove they can play just as well as those seniors who had started since seventh grade.”