Owensboro Catholic took charge early and never looked back, grabbing a 12-4 win and a trip to the 9th District Championship when they took down Apollo Monday at OCHS.
Apollo drew first blood in the top of the first, snagging a run on a fielder’s choice, but the Lady Aces had a large answer brewing.
Hadley Phelps got the rally started with a leadoff single, with fellow senior Hannah Carter doubling a batter later to knot things up at one.
The hits just kept coming in the inning with an RBI single, followed by a fielder’s choice to make it 3-1. The first of a plethora of errors for the E-gals on the day led to another run, which was followed up by an RBI groundout to give Catholic a 5-1 lead going into the second.
Head Coach Stephen Julian said that Catholic hit the ball well, but he felt that his team gave them too many free opportunities.
“That’s our year all year,” Julian said. “We either catch the ball or we don’t and tonight we didn’t. I haven’t even counted them up yet, but I bet we had at least eight or nine errors. And that’s not counting mental errors that we made afterwards and you can’t do that especially against coach Phelps and his team. They’re going to take advantage of that and they did.”
The Lady Aces kept the pressure on Apollo, scoring two in the bottom of the second, taking an early 7-1 lead. However, the E-gals bounced right back, keeping themselves in the game with a two-run top of the third to cut their deficit to 7-3.
Catholic’s bats couldn’t be stopped as they put together a three-run inning in response and a 10-3 lead proved to be more than enough for Phelps on the mound.
Phelps made Apollo put the ball in play and trusted her defense throughout the game. It paid off as she only allowed six hits en route to the victory.
Phelps also helped herself at the plate, going 4-5 with RBI.
OC coach Jeremy Phelps said Hadley fights and wants to be in control in the circle on the biggest stages, no matter what the circumstance and it showed against the E-gals.
“She’s a warrior …” Phelps said. “She wants that ball. She asks for the ball. In the big moment that’s what she wants. So I can’t be any more proud as a dad and as a coach.
A number of other Lady Aces got in on the action offensively, with seven players registering at least a hit and an RBI. Brooke Hamilton and Carter led the way with three RBIs, with Bailey Hamilton registering two.
The Lady Aces now have less than 24 hours to prepare for the 9th District Tournament championship against Daviess County at 5:30 p.m.
