Lady Longhorns bow out of AISA state tourney

MONTGOMERY — Errors befell Marengo Academy (19-8-2) on day one of the AISA state tournament Friday as the Lady Longhorns dropped a pair of afternoon contests to Pickens and Wilcox.

After opening the day with a 5-0 win over Edgewood, the Lady Longhorns struggled to catch up to the pitching of Pickens seventh grader Shelby Lowe in its second game of the day, losing 2-1. Lowe struck out 13 Marengo batters and limited the Lady Longhorns to two hits. Lowe got a called third strike to end the game with the tying run in scoring position.

The Lady Longhorns trailed 2-0 heading into the top of the seventh when Macey Petrey reached on an error and scored on a RBI grounder from Payton Stokes to cut the deficit in half. Stokes also notched the only two Marengo hits of the contest.

Marengo once again got a strong outing from UWA signee Andrea Edmonds, who struck out four over six innings of work and limited Pickens to three seeing-eye singles.

Pickens got its first run in the first inning, using three errors to get Lauren Duckworth home without benefit of a hit.

Bryonna McCool reached on a single in the sixth and scored on a passed ball for an insurance run.

Marengo appeared to run out of gas in its only losers bracket game, falling 8-0 to Wilcox. The Lady Longhorns committed 10 errors in the game, leading to seven unearned runs.

Edmonds scattered seven hits and struck out four in the game. Mandy Jordan countered for Wilcox with 15 strikeouts and three hits over a complete game effort.

Wilcox scored three runs in the first, two in the fourth and one in each of the fifth, sixth and seventh innings.

Marengo got singles out Petrey and Edmonds and a double out of Ryan Hale in the loss.