The Lake High School Girls Slow Pitch Softball team capped off a magical season by defeating Houston High School (27-10) for the MHSAA Class I State Championship in Ridgeland this past Saturday.
The Lady Hornets finish the year with a record of 32-3, and brought home the first state title in school history for the Lady Hornets softball program.
After losing the first game 5-2 to the Lady Toppers in the best-of-three championship series, the Lady Hornets came back to win the second game 9-2 to force a winner take all game three. Lake finished off their state championship season with a 13-3 win in six innings in the deciding game three.
In championship game, LHS’s Kalyn Lott singled to center in the bottom of the sixth inning to lift the Lady Hornets over Houston with a 10-run rule win.
“We lost Game one, but I never got worried because of the team we have,” said first-year LHS head coach Jake Loper. “I knew our girls were mentally tough and had a whole lot of fight in them. I can’t tell you how special it is to start my career here at Lake with this team made up by these special girls.”
In the final game, Lake scored two runs in the bottom of the first, a run in the second and three runs in the third, highlighted by an RBI triple by Kate Gladney. After Houston put three runs on the board, the Lady Hornets tacked on two more runs in the fifth inning and ended with four runs in the bottom of the sixth.
“We play on a smaller field and the fields here in Madison are a lot bigger, so all week we worked on staying on top of the ball and stay line to line with playing on the bigger field,” Loper said, “I thought that was the difference today, we hit well again today like we have all year long.”
