Brown’s bat big again as West Laurens softball completes season sweep of East Laurens

Their first meeting back in August got more than a little bit wild. 

East Laurens held a 6-0 lead through five innings; West Laurens suddenly rallied for seven to take it back in the sixth; The Falcons scored three to tie in the top of the seventh; and the Raiders turned around to walk off a 10-9 win on an RBI double by Madison Brown. 

She was the hero once again as West defeated East for a second time Monday evening, though this one was much less eventful for the Raiders. 

Brown hit a three-run home run and a sacrifice fly for four RBIs as they cruised to an 8-1 victory in East Dublin. 

The non-region rematch kicked off an important week for both squads in their hopes of finishing the region schedule, and regular season strong.

West (17-7, 5-2 region 3-AAAA and sixth in GHSA AAAA Post Season Rankings) was due to conclude region play with presumptive champ Long County on Tuesday, and wrap its next-to-last week against Telfair County Wednesday, both at home. 

The Falcons (17-8, 9-1 region 2-AA and No. 16 in the AA PSRs) will host Bleckley County in an important region contest Thursday afternoon. 

Both sides’ pitchers – the Raiders’ Peyton Crabb and East’s DeAndrea Lowther – were sharp. 

Crabb produced an abundance of soft contact, for ground and fly balls that her defenders took care of pretty routinely. 

When Lowther’s fastball was hitting the mark, West Laurens hitters had a hard time catching up, though several managed to wait her out to get aboard.

The Raiders, all in all, kept things a bit cleaner in the field, and were more effective at moving and driving those runners to post numbers in the second, fifth and sixth frames. 

East’s only score in the bottom of the fifth took advantage of a West Laurens error to score Avery Smith, after an earlier hit-by-pitch, on a DeAndrea Lowther ground ball, though another runner became the Falcons’ second of the day thrown out at the plate as the Raiders recovered to get out of the inning. 

Crabb kept them off the board in every other inning. 

Brown not only drove in four runs, but also represented the first after leading off the second with a walk. Demmie Moss singled and Kinsley Moore bunted both over to score on a 2-RBI single by Maggie Shea Lord. She’d make it 3-0 Raiders on an Ella Thompson triple. 

West Laurens added two to the lead in the fifth, as Powell doubled to deep center and Audrie Edenfield laid down a sac bunt in front of Brown’s fly to center that allowed the first to tag third and make it 5-0. Moss beat the throw home to score another on a ground ball that got loose on the hot corner.

Thompson walked and Paisley Powell reached on an error before Brown’s drive to deep to center to deliver the Raiders’ final blow in the sixth.