Bleckley Co. softball falls in opening round of GHSA playoffs

The Royals fought hard in the first round of the GHSA A-Division I tournament but fell in two games to Dade County.

Bleckley County put up one of the better performances of a lower seed in the bracket’s opening round, taking the Wolverines to task in both games by never falling out of reach. The first game, a 3-1 loss for the Royals, resembled a playoff game in every sense.

Senior pitcher Addison Hill pitched six great innings, allowing only five hits and three runs, but the Royals’ offense just couldn’t get going against ace Lexi Lawson. Lawson allowed the same number of hits, but Bleckley County did not string them together and pushed across only one run.

The second game felt like a playoff game as well, but in an entirely different way, as the two teams exploded offensively in a 16-11 win for Dade County.

The second loss was the more crushing of the two, as the Royals jumped out to a 7-1 lead in the third inning and a 9-3 lead in the fourth, capitalizing on several Dade County errors to make a winner-take-all third game seem imminent. 

The Wolverines roared back in the late innings, however, scoring a whopping 11 runs in the sixth before an eerily quiet finish from the Royals finalized their season. 

The avalanche of runs came when Bleckley County put Hill back into the pitcher’s circle after Game 2 starter Kaylee Rae Barrs started struggling and the lead was cut to 9-6. Hill could not stop the bleeding, though, failing to record a single out while allowing seven runs on five hits. Barrs finished Game 2 with all seven innings pitched and six earned runs allowed on 13 hits.

Hill succeeded in the box despite her pitching woes in the second game, tallying a homer and acting as a key part of the Bleckley County offense. Emmie Williams finished the two-game set with four hits and two runs batted in. Lyric Stephens hit the triple that drove on the Royals’ lone run in Game 1.

Bleckley County finished the season with a record of 11-12. Dade County will play one of Bleckley’s fellow Region 2 teams, No. 6 East Laurens, in the second round of the GHSA A-Division I tournament Thursday.