by Rusty Ellis
The DeKalb County Tigerettes took home a big 13-0 district victory over Upperman on Wednesday night, as nine runs in the fifth and sixth innings proved to be too much for the Lady Bees to overcome.
DeKalb opened with two runs in the first inning off UHS starter Morgan Green, and added two more in the second to take a 4-0 lead.
Reese Kimmell took the circle in relief in the third inning, and slowed down the Tigerette offense with a pair of scoreless innings in the third and fourth innings, but then disaster struck in the fifth.
Elaina Turner hit a sacrifice fly to score the first of five runs in the frame, as Emma Martin, Morgan Walker, Bryna Pelham and Zaleigh Bane all added RBI hits of their own to push the lead to 9-0.
DeKalb wasn’t done there, as they added four more runs in the top of the sixth to push the lead to 13-0. Turner knocked in the first two runs on an RBI double, while Pelham stroked a single to center to score the final two runs of the evening.
DCHS starter Kora Kilgore closed out an excellent performance in the circle with a scoreless bottom of the sixth inning to complete the six-inning shutout for the Tigerettes.
Pelham finished with three hits and three RBIs, while Turner drove in three runs of her own as the Tigerettes pounded 19 total hits.
For head coach Danielle Horton, it’s a big deal any time her team can get a win in Baxter because it’s normally a battle any time the two teams get together.
“Upperman’s always been a good rival of ours, so it’s always fun to come down here,” Horton said. “The approach today was to just hit the ball hard, I didn’t care if it was right at someone. I just wanted us to take good swings at the plate…we’ve been focusing on swinging through the ball, and it showed today.”
Horton says the difference in the at-bats in the later innings was just that her team made the right adjustments at the plate.
“Once one person starts hitting, it just kind of goes down the line,” Horton said. “I think they adjusted to what (Kimmell) was throwing, and once we got a rally going, it was all fair game.”
Kilgore finished with a complete-game shutout and struck out six hitters while only allowing three hits. She got into trouble a couple times on Wednesday evening, but as Horton says, she’s earned her coach’s trust in those moments.
“She’s done a phenomenal job for us,” Horton said. “When she gets into tight situations, she always seems to pitch better…when there’s runners on base, she just seems to focus in a little bit more, and she was definitely locked in the entire game today.”
DeKalb County will hit the road on Tuesday for their next game at Macon County, while Upperman will face Portland on Friday in a doubleheader.
