EMCC - Athletics: Sports, News, Players, and Coaches. Go Lions! - Extra-inning nightcap win completes EMCC home softball sweep of Northwest

SCOOBA – The division-leading Lady Lions of East Mississippi completed a home softball doubleheader sweep of Northwest Mississippi by claiming a 7-6 extra-inning victory in Tuesday’s nightcap on the Scooba campus. After holding on for an 8-6 win in the opener, EMCC took the visiting Lady Rangers to nine innings in the second contest to lock up the sweep.

Coach Kate Neely’s EMCC Lady Lions currently top the MACJC’s North Division standings with a 10-2 league mark. Second-place Itawamba enters Friday’s twin bill at rival Northeast Mississippi with an 8-2 division record.

During Tuesday’s nightcap in Scooba, EMCC and Northwest battled to a 4-4 deadlock after the regulation seven innings with both teams producing all of their respective runs through the first four frames. Using the international tie-breaker rule of beginning all extra innings with a base-runner at second base, both teams pushed across solo runs in the eighth inning.

In the top of the ninth, Northwest’s Candice Brasher doubled home Haylei Plummer and was bunted over to third by Casi Brooks for the first out of the inning. However, EMCC’s Courtney Nunn, in her sixth inning of relief work on the mound, got pinch-hitter Kristen Cooper and Angela Carden to fly out and keep the runner stranded at third. In home half of the inning, Cayla Coleman’s infield single – her fourth hit of the contest – moved leadoff runner Justine Jenkins to third base. Following a strikeout, Mallory Pace’s groundout to second base scored Jenkins and moved Coleman to third. With two outs, Celeste Fontenot’s grounder was not fielded cleanly by Northwest shortstop Mandy Bolden. As a result, Fontenot beat the ensuing throw to first base and Coleman scampered home with the winning run.

Coleman, a freshman second baseman from Meridian’s Clarkdale High School, had three runs scored in the nightcap to go along with her four singles. On the day, she was 5-for-8 with five runs scored hitting from the leadoff spot in the lineup. Former Neshoba Central product Leigh Ellen “Hootie” Barefield was 3-for-4 in the nightcap with a pair of doubles and two runs batted in. Fontenot and Jenkins each contributed a pair of hits to the Lady Lions’ 13-hit effort in the second contest.

After picking up the complete-game victory in the opener, Nunn went the final 5.1 innings of the nightcap in relief of Nashedra Barry to collect her 11^th win of the campaign. Following an 11-strikeout effort in the first game, Nunn scattered six hits and fanned three to cap her afternoon’s work from the circle.

In Tuesday’s first contest, the Lady Lions used a five-run second inning to take an early 6-2 advantage. With Northwest’s Lauren Kendall holding the home team to just three hits over the final four innings in relief of Brasher, EMCC was able to secure two critical runs and stretch the lead to 8-3 in the third when Barry was credited with a two-out, two-run bloop single that was lost in the sun by the Northwest infielders. Meanwhile, the Lady Rangers slowly worked their way back into the contest with solo runs in four straight innings. However, the visitors stranded seven total base-runners over those four frames, including leaving the bases loaded in the sixth.

Barry, a freshman from Columbus High School, paced EMCC’s 10-hit outing in the opener with a 3-for-4 effort and three runs batted in, including an RBI double in the five-run second, in which the Lady Lions sent 11 batters to the plate. Fontenot, from Baton Rouge, had two hits and scored a pair of runs on the way to a 4-for-9 performance at the plate for the afternoon.

Now 12-25 overall on the season, the East Mississippi softball team travels to Booneville to meet Northeast Mississippi in a Friday doubleheader beginning at 2 p.m.