Chloe Grayson of Meigs County pitches against Lexington.MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - While they didn't look overwhelmed by the state tournament, Meigs County's young softball Lady Tigers certainly went through some growing pains here in their two games.
The Lady Tigers, who have just one senior and were making the program's first appearance at the BlueCross Spring Fling in three years, committed four errors and couldn't take advantage of their own opportunities in a 7-2 loss to Lexington that eliminated them from the Class AA bracket.
"They accomplished a lot just by getting here," Meigs County coach Jeff Davis said. "This was a good experience for a young team. Now they know what it takes to get back here and to compete against the best once they get here."
With both teams facing elimination, Lexington scored two runs in the home half of the first inning, added another in the third, then blew the game open with two runs in both the fourth and sixth innings.
Third baseman Baylee Nunley is Meigs' lone senior, while the Lady Tigers also had four juniors, four freshmen and three sophomores. The Decatur school has the second-smallest enrollment among all Tennessee Class AA programs and next year, which is a reclassification season, it will drop down to Class A.
Meigs County made at least one error in three of the four innings in which Lexington scored.
"Defense definitely let us down today. We butchered some plays today that opened the door for them to score a bunch of runs," Davis said. "We had some chances ourselves, but we never could put together a couple of hits it would take to really score several runs we needed."
Contact Stephen Hargis at shargis@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6293.