Pro-tip: never, ever leave a Lady Tigers softball game early.
Three days after opening their season with a comeback win over Monett, Republic overcame a 7-0 deficit to storm past Reeds Spring 12-10. Julia Higgins and Livi Collier started the party with back-to-back homers in the bottom of the 4th inning.
Reeds Spring scored three runs in the 5th to stretch their lead to 10-4, but Republic exploded for seven more runs in the bottom of the inning to take the lead 11-10. Collier slugged her second home run of the night, but the big hit was a bases-loaded, two-run bunt single by Kaitlyn Ragsdale. Ragsdale pushes the ball down the first base line, and as the Reeds Spring defense futilely tried to retire her at first, two runners scampered home.
Republic tacked on another run in the bottom of the 6th inning for insurance, and Avery Romans came in to finish out the game in the pitcher’s circle, shutting the door on the Wolves.
Before Republic’s offensive outburst in the fourth, Higgins says the mood in the dugout was somber.
“It was a little bit down. We usually start pretty well, but we were just tense,” she says. “The (Reeds Spring) pitcher, I know everyone was really tense with her because they thought ‘She’s got this riseball and we’re not going to hit her. We relaxed, but it was tense at first.”
Collier says hitting in the lineup after Higgins makes her job easier.
“I was really just trying to get a hit,” she says of her home run, “but it’s really easy when you’ve got a girl in front of you that hits the ball that well. It makes you relax, because you think, ‘Hey, if she can do it, I can do it.’ I think once we all jumped on that first pitch strike, we were gone from there.'”
Republic improves to 2-0 against two of the better teams in the area — Monett and Reeds Spring — to start the season. They return to action Tuesday at home against Buffalo.