MARYVILLE – Maryville and Sewanee renewed a Volunteer State rivalry here Sunday for the first time in 19 years, and the games were worth the wait.
The Scots squeaked out both ends of a doubleheader against the Tigers, winning 7-4 and then 3-2 in eight innings.
Ava Whitmire delivered the winning hit in Game 2, scoring
Micayla Clark from second base on a hard smash up the middle.
Clark was at second to start the inning via the international tie-breaker rule. After Maryville's leadoff hitter was retired, Whitmire came through to continue her terrific season.
"We work on situational hitting a lot, and making sure that we are hitting a hard ground ball in those cases," said Whitmire, who is third on the team in batting at .390. "The whole at bat, my brain was thinking 'down and hard, down and hard.' The pitch ended up being outside and I shot it back through the middle."
Koonce Caps Big Week
Maryville tied the score in the fifth when
Sara Koonce blasted her fifth home run of the season and third of the week over the center field fence. Koonce had quite the week, batting .611 with a triple, three home runs and 11 RBIs.
That homer got Scots starting pitcher
Tia Stewart off the hook and set the stage for
Mikayla Hoschak and
Whitney Carr to pitch one-hit shutout ball over the final five innings. Carr (5-1) notched the win with two perfect innings, including retiring the Tigers without scoring in their half of the eighth with the runner starting at second and nobody out.
"It was a really great staff effort today that saw our pitchers do their jobs," Maryville head coach
Jill Moore said.
Megan Ackerman was the winning pitcher in Game 1, going 6 and 1/3 innings and allowing no runs on three hits with two strikeouts. Ackerman was dominant the first five frames and then Moore went to her bullpen, only to watch Sewanee score four times and pull within 5-4.
But Ackerman came on and got the last four outs while the Scots tacked on a couple of runs for a more comfortable 7-4 result.
Koonce in the doubleheader was 3-for-5 with two runs scored and three driven in.
Brecca Williams was 3-for-6 with three runs scored. For the week, Williams batted .500 with 12 runs scored.
Bailey Myers added 2-for-5 in the twin bill and Whitmire was 2-for-3.
The Scots went 4-2 for the week and finished their nonconference season at 17-7. That's a 3½-game improvement over last season (12-9) and four games better than 2022 (11-11).
Great Team Chemistry
"We have probably the best team chemistry since I've been here," Whitmire said. "I'm really proud of us. We are good at picking each other up when we make mistakes."
Her head coach agrees, emphasizing that the Scots went 8-4 over a just-completed 12-game road swing – despite losing the last two in one-run fashion at No. 18 Huntingdon.
"I'm happy with the way our entire team played during this stretch," Moore said. "We had some struggles; we had some really good parts; we're still getting better and we're still learning. It's going to prepare us for the conference tournament and the rest of the road trips we have. We battled really hard every day and I'm proud of how we throw punch after punch in game after game.
"It was a tough stretch, and the girls did a great job of being up for it."
Sunday's games against Sewanee were the first between these Tennessee rivals since 2005.
Maryville is home again Friday versus Agnes Scott and Saturday against Wesleyan. Both days are doubleheaders, and both days begin at 1 p.m.
