BROOKSVILLE – Kama Woodall had plenty of reason to run out of gas by the time the bottom of the seventh rolled around in Saturday night’s final.
Springstead’s junior pitcher was working on her 14th straight inning of work across two games spanning roughly four hours, yet had somehow managed to dominate a dominant Nature Coast squad.
Oh yeah, and she wasn’t even feeling well, enduring a battle with bronchitis that frequently forced her to step off the mound and cough throughout the game.
Even as the Lady Sharks began to grind out lengthy at-bats throughout their last turn at the plate, and managed to put the tying run in scoring position, Woodall dug down to escape trouble and seal a 1-0 victory in the championship tilt of Hernando High’s Leopard Slam softball tournament at Tom Varn Park.
“What can you say about Kama? I mean my God, you don’t see performances like that very often,” Springstead head coach Craig Swartout said. “You hear about performances like that, where ‘Oh they were sick,’ and blah, blah, blah. Man, I’ve never seen a gutsier performance. And she was throwing harder in the seventh inning of the second game than she was in the first game. So I take my hat off to her.”
Woodall, who came into the night 8-1 with a 1.17 earned run average, tossed a complete game in the semifinal, a 5-0 win over Bellaire (Texas) that ended 15 minutes prior to the start of the final.
Against Nature Coast (16-2), she yielded just a pair of singles over seven innings, walking none while striking out nine. Back on Feb. 12, both she and the Lady Eagles (16-1) suffered their only loss to the Lady Sharks, 3-1.
“I pitch better when I’m sick, but the past couple of games I haven’t been playing as well. So I think that factored into me trying to work really hard,” Woodall said. “And the team as a whole, we come out to have fun. So it really lifted me up when I was trying to pitch.
“I was getting my corners. The first time we played them I wasn’t getting my corners. It was really just my ability to mix up pitches instead of just relying heavily on one corner, which kept them off-balance mostly.”
Saturday’s slate of the two-day, 22-team tournament was thrown into chaos by heavy rain that drenched the available fields, forcing the cancelation of all but the final three games. Nature Coast (16-2) defeated River Ridge in the first semifinal, 4-1.
In the finale, Woodall and Abbey Primavera matched zeroes through four innings, with the latter escaping a bases-loaded, two-out jam with a strikeout in the third.
Primavera stranded two more runners in the fourth, but Springstead finally broke through in the top of the fifth. Emily Kolwicz was hit by a pitch to lead off the frame and came around when the next batter, Abby Oliver, smashed a double deep to left field.
That was the last hitter to reach against Primavera, who allowed six hits and one walk against four strikeouts.
However, the Lady Sharks could do almost nothing offensively against Woodall. She faced one over the minimum over the first six innings, the lone blemish a groundball single up the middle by Mare Sparacia with two outs in the fourth.
Sparacia struck again, singling to left with one away in the seventh. She advanced to second when Woodall lost her grip and spiked a pitch into the ground, yet Woodall recovered with a strikeout before fielding a comebacker and throwing to first to record the last out.
“I was dying. I was ready to collapse, but I think it was the adrenaline and just the sheer positively from my team,” Woodall said. “I knew if anything got hit, my team would have me on it.
“It feels great and it’s a great victory for us because that’s our only loss so far this season. To come back from that and play even better, it’s going to escalate us that much more.”
There won’t be a long wait for the rubber match between these two local powerhouses. They already had a game scheduled for Tuesday night at Springstead.
“It was two big-time teams we played today. We were able to gut it out,” Swartout said. “This was one of those games that you couldn’t do it if it wasn’t a team thing. It took people bunting, it took people diving for balls, it took people sacrificing.”
On Friday, the Lady Eagles had beaten Tarpon Springs, 4-2, and Kissimmee-Gateway, 11-0. Nature Coast notched wins over Citrus, 9-0, and Kissimmee-Liberty, 14-0, while Hernando (8-7) knocked off Ocala-West Port, 6-5, but fell to Bellaire, 6-0.
Central (4-11) suffered losses to Tarpon Springs, 13-3, and South Sumter, 13-3, and Weeki Wachee (5-9) went down to River Ridge, 13-2, and Gulf, 2-0.
With Hernando County public schools on spring break, only a handful of athletic events took place outside of the softball tournament.
In baseball, Springstead (12-3) pushed its Class 6A, District 6 record to 10-0 with a 2-1 win over Dunnellon on Tuesday. The Eagles followed that with a victory at county-rival Central on Thursday, 10-6. The Bears (8-6) had beaten Bishop McLaughlin Catholic on Tuesday, 5-4.
Nature Coast (12-2) saw its 10-game winning streak snapped on Tuesday with a 15-6 loss to Tennessee’s Christian Academy of Knoxville. The Sharks bounced back the next day by thumping Sunlake, 11-1.
Gulf hosted the Chasco Invitational track and field meet on Friday, with the Nature Coast boys taking first place, scoring 133.5 points, edging Lecanto (126). Lecanto’s girls turned the tables, outscoring the Lady Sharks, 154-145.
Ashley Gentz captured the 100-meter dash for the Lady Sharks, crossing the finish line in 12.96, and the 400 behind a 1:01.12. Gentz, Eboni Johnson, Jessica Osborne and Kaitlyn Pierce combined for a first-place 51.40 in the 4×100 relay, while Gentz, Johnson, Pierce and Amanda Leyden won the 4×400 (4:25.24). Pierce added a first in the 200 (27.10).
For the boys, DeShawn Smith took first in the long jump (18-9 1/2). Brian Haygood, Dajour Morgan, Smith and Dontay Washington ran the fastest 4×100 (45.30). Jacob Grantz, Kyle Pierce, Saban Reiter and Smith topped the field in the 4×400 (3:43.81).
Follow Chris Bernhardt Jr. on Twitter @cpbernhardtjr.