The defending champions teettered on the brink for the first 4 ½ innings of the opening game of the 2nd Region softball tournament Monday. Then Henderson County opened the door, and the Madisonville Lady Maroons barged their way through on the way to an 8-2 win at Mortons Gap.
Henderson County controlled the early innings of the game, shutting down the high powered Lady Maroon offense for the first four innings, while taking a 2-0 lead of their own. The whole tenor of the game changed in the bottom of the 5th inning when Madisonville was able to draw a walk to open the inning, and the dam burst from there.
After the walk to open the bottom of the 5th, the Lady Maroons were able to advance the runner around to 3rd, where Courtney Patterson came up with an RBI single to make it a 2-1 Henderson County lead. Graci Arndt followed with another RBI single to make it 2-2. After a wild pitch made it 3-2 Madisonville, Mikayla Spurlin cracked a long home run to make it 5-2 temporarily. Turns out, the runner in front of Spurlin missed home plate, so the score at the end of the 5th was 4-2.
But the damage was more than done. A confident Henderson County team then lost the fire in its eyes, and the defending state champs had the game in hand. The Lady Maroons would then add four more runs in the bottom of the 6th inning to seal the game away.
