Flora delivers seventh inning knockout punch for East Webster
May 17—ELLISTOWN — Peyton Flora came through with the crucial hit in the top of the seventh that handed East Webster the 9-5 win over East Union and send the Lady Wolverines to the 2A state softball championships at Southern Miss on Wednesday.
Flora came up with the bases loaded and two outs with East Webster clinging to a narrow 6-5 lead thanks to an earlier RBI groundout by Hallie Jo Reed that scored Katelee Box to break a 5-5 tie.
Flora got a pitch to her liking and jumped on it for a 3-RBI triple and stake the Lady Wolverines to a comfortable 9-5 lead which held up for the final score.
"We have just worked so hard for this all year and I know one of our sayings is 'made for this moment' and I just knew that I wouldn't be in that moment for no reason," Flora said. "So I just had to take confidence in myself and I knew that my teammates were behind me and that is what got me through that at-bat.
The game was a back-and-forth affair that saw East Webster take an early 1-0 lead in the second only to see East Union come back and grab a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the third.
The Lady Wolverines came back to take another lead in the top of the fourth as they scored three runs for a 4-2 lead.
That lead was short-lived as the Lady Urchins came right back to answer with three runs of their own in the bottom half of the inning for a 5-4 advantage.
East Webster tied the game at 5-5 in the top of the fifth and the score stayed there until the rally in the top of the seventh.
"We've got a bunch of junior and senior upperclassmen that have always been doing things the right way, they just kept fighting, kept fighting," East Webster coach John Harris said. "We've just got to play one game at a time, that's what you work all year for."
Extra Bases
Big Inning: The East Webster seventh decided the contest as the Lady Wolverines broke a 5-5 tie, scoring four runs to take the series win.
Big Stat: Peyton Flora had two hits (double and triple) and drove in five runs including the final three of the contest for the Lady Wolverines.
Coach Speak: "We just ran out of gas, we rode these seventh and eighth grade pitchers from day one and (Lucy) Cochran was done after the third inning. We just got tired, we had opportunities early, but just didn't get it done." — East Union coach Josh Blythe
