East Texas Thunder takes third at state

Special to the Review

The East Texas Thunder softball team has made its mark at the Texas Teenage Associations High School Eligible Tournament in Brownwood, Texas by finishing third in the State of Texas.

What started out as a rough year turned out to be a big success for these young ladies.

“Over the past 10 years, the core of the team was formed from local Mabank girls comprising of Brandie Lander, Lauren Norwood, Ashley Hammack, Alison Castle,” said Head Coach Scott Tuley. “Then later this year to put a team on the field we had to seek out some talent in other local towns that could help us compete at the state level.”

Added to the roster was Jaime Watson (Mabank), Taylor Watson (Athens), Dani Quade (Athens), Hayley Maxfield (Athens), Shelby Tardiff (Malakoff), Bri Denis (Malakoff), Taylor Talbert (Cross Roads), Chelsey Pryor (Cross Roads), Josie Nutt (Cross Roads), Courtney Chitty (Cross Roads) and Katie Tapley (Mildred).

“These young ladies were selected based on performance, attitude, and competitiveness to the game of softball. Then looking around the area for an assistant coach after Steve Tardiff had to leave because of a coaching job at Cross Roads, we thought no one else better than the hitting coach for the girls, Greg Perry,” Tuley said. “Greg stepped in to help the girls with their batting and corrected some things that helped our team down the road at state.”

After finishing league play at 10-0 for the third consecutive year, it was on to Brownwood for the state tournament. The last two years East Texas Thunder had finished fifth in state by losing out to Brownwood.

The ladies would have a chance to redeem their selves this year by playing Brownwood Bombers in the first pool game, but losing to them 8-3. We did not want to show them any pitching that we had lined up for them, because we knew we would face them later in the tournament.

The next pool game, ETT would get a chance for redemption by playing the Ennis Outlaws and with great pitching coming from Josie Nutt, the bats finally came alive and ETT was able to handle the Outlaws, 8-1.

Now the tune up had finished and it was time for the big show to begin at 5 p.m. on Friday. Thunder would be chosen to play Cisco Drive for the first game of the tournament. With Lander in the circle and a thick line-up of players, Thunder came roaring out in this game to hand the Cisco team a loss of 8-2.

Next up for ETT at 9 p.m. was the Early Force, a hometown team just 5 miles from the ballpark. Nutt was chosen to be in the circle for this game because of her performance in the prior game against the Outlaws. ETT came away with another victory against the Force, 10-1.

After the win against the Force it would set up the showdown with the Brownwood Bombers — a team that ETT would have problems with the whole tournament. After multiple errors to start the game, Thunder was only down by three runs at the end of three innings.

“Lander had a great tournament inside the circle for us,” said Tuley. “She just continued to do the job that was asked of her the whole weekend and that was to make them hit the ball on the ground.”

But later on, the bats did not work and Brownwood played excellent defense to down ETT for an 8-5 loss.

ETT would take it upon itself to rebound from the loss and shine in the last game of the night against the Clyde Ladydogs.

During the Clyde game, ETT defense was outstanding with great plays coming from the outfield by Norwood, Nutt and Denis. Then the infield held its own with plays coming from Quade, Hammack, Castle, Tardiff and Watson.

Castle would send one of the balls out of the yard to help the ETT girls win 5-1 and get ready for a game against crosstown rival from East Texas, the Winnsboro Rapid Fire.

After beating Winnsboro in league play 4-2 and 11-10, it was time to gather up again on Sunday morning to get things going. After a slow start for ETT, Winnsboro jumped out to an early lead of 3-0. Then later in the game ETT started clawing back inch by inch from 3-1 and 3-2 deficits. Then in the bottom of the seventh inning Thunder was down to its last three outs and the bottom of the lineup coming to bat. So with two outs and the scored tied 4-4 and runners on first and second, Norwood hit a shot between left and centerfield to bring in Maxfield for the winning run.

ETT would advance to play the Brownwood Bombers again. The last game of the tournament would again face two old foes against each other to advance to the championship game. The result would be the same as the Bombers would defeat ETT, 8-3, to send the East Texas Thunder home with a third place finish.

“In closing down the season our girls represented the East Texas area well,” Tuley said. “The girls preformed as well as we as coaches could have asked them. Yes we made mistakes, errors, etc., but what we accomplished as a team and to bring four to five towns together and compete at a level we competed at says wonders for these ladies. Nobody will ever be able to take this away from them. Thanks goes out to the parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles for their support and letting their daughters play for East Texas Thunder.”

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