SPRING HILL – For the Nature Coast softball team, the old cliché held true. The third time was indeed the charm.
Facing Springstead for the third and final time this season, the visiting Lady Sharks overcame a three-run deficit on Wednesday night and avenged two earlier losses to the Lady Eagles, winning 7-4 in nine innings.
“We needed that. We’ve struggled a little bit. I backloaded the schedule with a lot of tough teams getting ready for the district. We had lost five games by a total of eight runs,” Nature Coast head coach Jug Olmstead said. “This was a big boost going into the districts, big time. So I’m real happy. The bats finally came around a little bit, got a little contagious after a little bit.”
The Lady Sharks (17-7) had begun the season 12-0 before losing twice to Springstead (19-4) in three days last month, 8-2 in the Leopard Slam final on March 18 and 2-0 on their home field on March 20.
More recently, Nature Coast had been shut out in its two previous contests against state-ranked Crystal River and South Sumter, and fell out of the Miracle Sports Class 5A state poll released on Tuesday. Initially it appeared those woes would continue against the Lady Eagles, formerly the top-ranked team in 6A and currently fourth.
Regular starting pitcher Kama Woodall wasn’t on the mound for this one, but still made a significant impact. After Delaney Woodall and Abby Oliver opened the bottom of the first inning with a double and single respectively, Kama Woodball smacked a three-run home run just to the right of the flagpole in right-center field.
Chayse Skinner and Abby Marshall hit back-to-back two-out doubles in the top of the third to cut into the deficit, but Kama Woodall responded in the bottom of the frame lining a single to center to score Oliver, who had two hits to set a new school career record in that category with 137.
From that point, Nature Coast pitcher Abbey Primavera shut down the Springstead bats, not allowing a runner to reach second the rest of the way.
In the fifth, the Lady Sharks stormed back. Marshall lined a two-run double down the left-field line and Primavera followed by lacing a base hit into center that tied the game.
“We were just talking about making adjustments next at-bat,” Olmstead said. “We weren’t letting the ball get deep enough, and then once we started letting it get deep enough, trying to take everything back up the middle, we drove the ball.”
It would take two extra innings to decide the outcome, ninth-place hitter Morgan Johnson starting the rally with a leadoff single in the top of the ninth and scoring when Skinner doubled to left. The junior finished 4-for-5 with three doubles and scored three times.
“High, inside pitch. She threw it before and I just said if she’s coming again, I’m taking a hard hack,” Skinner said. “I wanted to win the at-bat so bad for my team and, well, I hit it.”
Alanis Berrios added a two-run single to center later in the inning, and Primavera pitched around an error to close out the bottom half of the ninth.
“It was a great win. We were super-excited,” Skinner said. “We’ve been kind of on the downlow lately. We’ve been losing a couple games and we came back, fought hard. Stuck our nose in there, executed. I feel great about this win. We really deserved it.
“We just needed to calm down. We were super-anxious in the beginning of the game. We knew that we had it, we just had to stay within ourselves, execute, get hits and we did that.”
The Lady Eagles have also played a beefed-up schedule down the stretch, featuring ranked teams such as Academy at the Lakes and Belleview.
“I thought we started off good. But you give up 13 hits, you’re going to get beat,” Springstead head coach Craig Swartout said. “We’ve got to go back to the drawing board. We did some good things, defensively I thought we played well. But we just kind of ran up against it. They were hot.
“We’re always trying to win games. It’s just one of those deals. It’s a rivalry game and they came out and hit the crap out of the ball. What can you say?”
Follow Chris Bernhardt Jr. on Twitter @cpbernhardtjr.