EMCC - Athletics: Sports, News, Players, and Coaches. Go Lions! - EMCC softball team sweeps Holmes to remain unbeaten in division play

SCOOBA – The East Mississippi softball team remained unbeaten atop the MACJC North Division standings by sweeping visiting Holmes, 9-1 and 5-4, Wednesday afternoon on the Scooba campus.

With the sweep, head coach Kate Neely’s Lady Lions improved their league record to 6-0. EMCC also owns doubleheader sweeps over Northeast Mississippi and Coahoma on the year.

In Wednesday’s opener, the Lady Lions pushed across runs in all five innings of the mercy rule-shortened contest. With two out in the first inning, Celeste Fontenot and Courtney Nunn reached safely on a single and double, respectively, and came around to score on Cayla Coleman’s two-run single.

Following Leigh Ellen Barefield’s double – her first of three hits in the opener - a Justine Jenkins sacrifice fly keyed a two-run second inning for the Lady Lions. Holmes scored once in the third, but EMCC answered in the bottom half of the inning by scoring three times with two outs to increase the lead to 7-1. Nunn began the rally with a single to center and later scored on Coleman’s base hit. Two batters later, Nashedra Barry drove home both Coleman and Mallory Pace with a clutch two-out single.

With Nunn scattering five hits over five innings, with four strikeouts and two walks, on the mound for East Mississippi, the home team tacked on solo tallies in the fourth and fifth before the mercy rule ended play following Jenkins’ RBI double.

In the nightcap, the visiting Lady Bulldogs took an early 2-0 lead on Courtney Rhodes’ two-run home run off EMCC’s Nunn. In their half of the inning, the Lady Lions responded with three runs to move ahead 3-2 after one frame. Coleman, DeShuni Sanders and Fontenot opened the inning with successive singles. Following Fontenot’s RBI single, Nunn brought home a run with a sacrifice fly to left and Barry added a two-out, run-scoring single.

Holmes knotted the score at 3-3 in the third with an unearned run, but EMCC countered with two more runs in the bottom of the inning to move ahead 5-3. Nunn and Pace started the third with back-to-back singles and advanced on a throwing error by Holmes catcher Cody Ables. With four RBI on the day, Barry later added a sacrifice fly to plate the eventual winning run.

As Nunn settled down with three straight scoreless innings, the visitors made things interesting in the seventh and final inning. After Nunn retired the first two batters, EMCC’s Barefield dropped Beth Livingston’s fly ball to left field. Rhodes followed with an RBI double to center for her third run batted in of the contest. Nunn secured her seventh win of the season by getting Ables to pop up to Fontenot at shortstop to seal the 5-4 victory.

In nailing down both wins of the doubleheader, Nunn allowed seven hits in the nightcap, while fanning five and issuing a pair of bases on balls. At the plate, Coleman, a Clarkdale High School product, went 3-for-4 with a run scored and a stolen base in the second game to cap a 5-for-7 hitting effort in the doubleheader. The freshman second baseman was 2-for-3 in the opener with three runs batted in and a run scored.

Now 8-21 overall, the EMCC Lady Lions continue divisional action at home by playing host to Itawamba in a Saturday doubleheader set to begin at 2 p.m. on the Scooba campus.