Tucker-ed out of the tournament

ARCADIA — In the first at bat of the sectional tournament, Rachel Antrim and Kara Tucker battled each other to a full count.
Tucker proceeded to foul off the next two pitches. Then she smacked a single to left field.
The Yorktown second baseman never stopped hitting, and neither did her teammates.
The Tigers racked up 19 hits Tuesday, five of which came from Tucker, as they pounded the Jay County High School softball team 21-0 in five innings in the opening round of the Class 3A sectional tournament at Hamilton Heights.
It was a difficult end to what had been a story of improvement over the second half of the season for the Patriots. After losing their first 10 games, they had won six of their final nine heading into the tournament.
“It seemed like we had come so far in the back half of the season,” said JCHS coach Amy Hawbaker, whose team committed seven errors. “And to see it end like this is very disappointing because they worked really hard to get to where they were. I hated to see it end like this.”
After Tucker’s leadoff single, Antrim struck out Taylor Foreman for the first out of the game.
But the next six batters reached base, with seniors Lexi Lumpkin and Whitney Wilson each smacking singles to drive in a pair of runs as the Tigers (17-5) built at 5-0 lead.
The Patriots (6-14) went down in order in the first inning, and Yorktown tacked on three more runs — all unearned — in the second, this time with Isabel Moore delivering a two-run single. Another unearned run in the third inning, driven in with the first of Tucker’s three doubles, pushed the advantage to 9-0.
The Tigers tacked on four more runs in the fourth inning, and then drove the point home in the fifth when they scored eight times on seven hits while sending 14 batters to the plate.
Tucker led the onslaught, capping her day with a two-run double to right-center field in the fourth inning and a two-run double to left in the fifth. She finished 5-for-5 with five RBIs and four runs.
“She’s mad because she didn’t get another at bat,” said Yorktown coach Jeff Berger of the junior who was on deck when Jay County recorded the final out of the fifth inning. “But that’s just her. She’s a go-getter.
“She’s always wanting to hit. She’s always taking BP all the time. It doesn’t surprise me out of her.”
Following her first-inning strikeout, Foreman reached base in each of her next four plate appearances, scoring twice and driving in two runs. Lumpkin and Wilson each finished with two hits, two runs and two RBIs, and Moore drove in three runs with her pair of hits.
The best scoring opportunity for the Patriots came in the third inning when sophomore third baseman Chloe Trissel reached base on a two-out, two-strike bunt single. She stole second base and third base, but was left stranded when Yorktown pitcher Brienna Bilbrey recorded a strikeout to end the inning.
“Chloe, I give her the green light to lay down the bunt,” said Hawbaker. “If she sees that that third baseman is playing back, which she did, she has a look that she gives me. And I say, ‘Do what you need to do.’ And that’s what she did. She does a great job getting the bunt down and getting on.”
The only other hits for Jay County were a two-out single to left from McKayla Norris in the second inning and a leadoff single to center from Gabby Hart in the fourth. Bilbrey struck out seven and did not allow a walk as she earned the win.
“It looked like her drop curve was working for her, and she had just enough offspeed that was tripping them up a little bit,” said Berger. “If she has that working, she usually has a pretty good day.”
The Tigers advance to the sectional semifinal Thursday to take on Delta, which knocked off Guerin Catholic 8-6 in its first-round game Tuesday. Yorktown lost to the defending champion Eagles 5-3 in last season’s semifinal, but clobbered them 21-11 earlier this year.