Story and Photos by Rusty Ellis
The Cookeville Lady Cavs used excellent base-running and timely hitting to take down Livingston Academy 12-2 on Tuesday.
LA opened the scoring thanks to a two-run double from Jazlyn Flowers, as the Lady Wildcats grabbed a 2-0 lead in the first inning.
Cookeville immediately answered with three runs in the bottom half of the inning to take a 3-2 advantage over the visitors, and that began a string of four innings that saw the Lady Cavs score multiple times to end the game early.
After getting LA in order in the second, Cookeville scratched across two more runs to push the lead to 5-2. The Lady Wildcats got a two-out triple in the third, but failed to bring the runner home, and that led to a six-run inning for CHS to run the lead to 11-2.
The Lady Cavs completed their scoring with a single run in the fourth to bring the game to the final score of 12-2 for head coach Jordan Webb.
“We’ve finally started playing with a little bit of confidence,” Webb said. “We’re making more plays, less mistakes and we’re swinging the bats better…even when they took the lead early, we still held our composure.”
Base-running proved to be a big factor, as the Lady Cavs were aggressive in taking an extra base at every opportunity. That’s one of the many things Webb hopes carries over from this game to the rest of the season.
“Because of our speed, we’ve got that tool and sometimes we don’t use it to our advantage,” Webb said. “When we go up there and we run aggressively and take extra bases, we’re running with some aggressiveness and putting some pressure on them…if you run hard, then good things are going to happen.”
