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Box Score 2 Scots Rally for 7-6 Win in Game 2
LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, Ga. – Maryville lost a bad one and then won a big one for a key split of its Wednesday doubleheader at Covenant to stay in the thick of the USA South Conference tournament race.
The Maryville Scots came from behind twice in the nightcap to defeat the Covenant Scots 7-6. A late five-run inning was the difference, and Kennedy Henry went the route for her fourth win in the last five starts. Covenant won the opener 8-0 in five innings.
Maryville with the split moves to 16-14 overall and 7-3 in the USA South, even with Covenant in the loss column. Covenant is 19-12 and 9-3. Maryville resides in fourth place, two games clear of Wesleyan (5-5). The top four teams from each division advance to the postseason tourney.
"We're still not playing well defensively, but in that last game we found a way to win," Scots head coach Leah Kelley said. "This team is starting to learn how to bounce back from mistakes. Now we just need to eliminate those mistakes so we don't have to bounce back in the first place."
Five-Run Fifth Inning
Trailing 4-2 to start the fifth, Maryville sent 10 batters to the plate and scored five times. With one out, Sara Koonce singled and Emily Hill walked. Ava Whitmire then delivered an RBI single through the right side to make it a 4-3 game.
Campbell White ran for Hill and Courtney Deck ran for Whitmire, with Deck stealing second. Covenant's Maggie Harris uncorked a wild pitch that plated White, and then Deck scampered home when the throw from the catcher to the covering Harris struck White and ricocheted away.
One out later, Kaliyah Hensic belted a no-doubt homer to left center to make it 6-4 Maryville. The Scots weren't done yet as Annie Fowler was hit by a pitch and then came all the way around on Amaya Goodloe's triple to the base of the wall in left, making it 7-4.
Covenant got a run back in both the fifth and sixth innings, and the home side Scots put the first two aboard to start the seventh. But Henry buckled down and recorded a strike out, a ground out and a fly out to end it.
Hill had given Maryville its first lead of the day in the third with a two-out, two-run double that one-hopped the wall in right-center. That blast plated Kaitlin Woodruff, who singled with two out, and Sara Koonce, who also had singled, and made it 2-1 Maryville.
Milestone Day for Hensic
Hensic came up huge for the Scots, going 3-for-4 with her home run and earning the Game 2 start at shortstop. It was the first three-hit game of her career. Koonce added a pair of hits and was 3-for-5 in the doubleheader.
"It was good to see Kaliyah's bat come alive today with that big home run," Kelley said of the sophomore infielder. "We needed someone at the bottom of the lineup to give us a spark, and she did that for us."
Henry scattered 11 hits but didn't walk a batter. She struck out three, and just four of the six runs against her were earned. Henry is now 4-2.
"That was a big game for her," Kelley said of the junior righthander. "We made some mistakes behind her, but she battled and got the outs she needed and kept us out of the big innings. We didn't back her up defensively, but we will figure that part out."
Wednesday's Game 1 was a wipeout from the start. Covenant scored four times in its first at bat after beginning the game with a triple, a double and a double. Maryville contributed a pair of errors in the first on its way to six errors for the game.
Only two of Covenant's eight runs were earned.
Megan Ackerman took the pitching loss and dropped to 10-8. She struck out three and didn't issue a walk but did allow 10 hits over her 4 and 2/3 innings. Lauren Kierpa (8-7) picked up the pitching victory for Covenant after scattering two hits over five innings for the shutout.
