Lee Ladies end Little Giants’ Region III hopes

By Jim Sacco

Published: May 21, 2008

No tears streamed down the face of Waynesboro softball for the last four seasons.
Instead, Little Giant hurler Brittnie Siron forced a disappointed smile. After spending every game in the pitcher’s circle since her freshman year, the senior’s best chance at sniffing regional play wafted away into the unseasonably cold May air.
“Usually we have one good inning,” Siron said. “But we didn’t today.”
The one good inning Wednesday belonged to R.E. Lee — a team that hasn’t been to the regional tournament since 2001 — when the Lee Ladies touched Siron for two runs in the sixth inning for the 2-0 win in the Southern Valley softball consolation game, securing the final Region III berth.
“It sucks,” Siron said. “My senior year, it would have been nice to go to regionals.”
A few other Little Giants cried in the parking lot at Kate Collins Middle School, a polar opposite of the cheers and high fives that ruled the early evening in the R.E. Lee dugout after the final out.
Coach Jim Hartman didn’t try to contain the excitement of his 5-14 team scoring the final Region III berth.
“It’s great, it’s great,” he said. “It’s been a long time and now we’re there.”
The first five innings looked like neither team wanted to go as Siron and Lee Ladies starter Alisha Taylor — along with strong defensive play behind them — kept both offenses in check.
Waynesboro put a runner past first base only twice in the game, wasting a two-out Kayla Bartley double in the second and left Brenda Price standing at the same base in the sixth. It wasn’t much better for R.E. Lee in the early going.
A two-out, third-inning double by Holly Hartman failed to produce a run when Waynesboro right fielder LaToya Diggs snagged a hot shot by Taylor out of the air. An inning later, Diggs kept the game scoreless when she threw out Kayla Snead trying to score from third on a Kara Butler single.
Butler would get her RBI in the sixth in a carbon-copy play, but Diggs’ throw home fell out of the glove of catcher Heather Sutton, giving R.E. Lee the only run it would need.
“I haven’t been great at hitting this season,” Butler said. “I knew I had to do it. All that was going through my mind was regionals, regionals, regionals. I just watched the ball instead of the pitcher and somehow just hit it.”
A batter later, Charmaine Wood added an RBI single for the insurance run and Taylor kept the Waynesboro bats at bay the final two innings.
Waynesboro coach Jason Aleshire, who shared district coach of the year honors with Fort Defiance’s Max Hill, was just as disappointed with the loss.
“The girls played their hearts out,” he said. “That inning … it could of went either way.”
Losing a four-year pitcher with 75-plus starts under her belt without a single regional appearance was a tough pill for Aleshire to swallow.
“What can you do?” he said. “What can you say? It was there.”