CHICKASHA —
The No. 4 Chickasha High School (5A) softball team hosted the No. 3 Tuttle Tigers (4A) on Tuesday evening, and the Tigers dominated from start to finish.
Tuttle won the game 8-0, run-ruling the Lady Chicks in five innings behind a dominating pitching performance by Shea Coats.
Chickasha dropped to 17-7 on the season, while Tuttle advanced to 19-4.
In five innings, Coats struck out eleven Chickasha batters and only allowed two hits.
It was the first time Coats had pitched in two weeks coming off an injury, and despite the strong performance, her coach said she is still not 100 percent.
"We know if we can score two or three runs early, we're going to be tough to beat," Tuttle head coach Jerry Bates said. "[Coats] came to me after the game and said she threw pretty bad, and I said 'If that's pretty bad, we'll take it.'"
Chickasha was out of the game very early on. Tuttle's first five batters reached base, and scored three runs in the first inning.
The second inning wasn't much different, with the Lady Tigers scoring three runs on four hits.
"We played flat [Monday] against Lawton Mac, so we kind of geared ourselves up for today because we knew this would be a tough contest for us," Bates said.
The Lady Chicks' only offense came from Tori Smith, Madison Snyder and Sydney McHugh.
Snyder had Chickasha's first hit, a single in the third inning. She also reached base on an error in the fifth.
Smith hit a double in the fourth inning. McHugh got to first on a third-inning bunt.
"They've been playing really well," Bates said of Chickasha. "I think today they had a little hangover from the big win over Duncan, and they came out a little flat today."
It wasn't only Tuttle's good pitching that led to the win. Chickasha made plenty of mistakes on defense with a few errors and misplayed balls in the outfield that led to Tiger runs.
"[Chickasha] played down a little bit today and made some mistakes, and that helped us out," Bates said.
Tuttle got plenty of offense, especially from the top half of the lineup.
Lauren Kelley went 3-for-4 and had a bunt single, a double and a triple with one RBI.
Peyton Garrett went 2-for-3 with two RBIs.
Tuttle used its speed to its advantage, something Chickasha usually does to its opponents.
"We have four left-handers in the lineup that can all drag, slap and swing, so we're going to run a lot," Bates said. "Then we had a couple of balls that wound up finding holes after that."
The highlight of the night on Chickasha's side of things came in the junior varsity game, when Haylie Douglas hit a solo home run.
The junior varsity also lost its game to Tuttle.
Chickasha is scheduled to play its next game today on the road against Capitol Hill at 4:30 p.m.
Tuttle is scheduled to play Arapaho at 9 a.m. Saturday.
Tuttle will be back in Chickasha later this season, when the Lady Tigers come back for the Chickasha Tournament on Sept. 21-22
