In its final tune up before Wednesday’s crucial District 5-3A softball showdown at Walker Valley, Ooltewah shellacked hapless Cleveland, 19-0, behind the three-hit pitching of Hadley Morrow and a 17-hit attack that helped the Lady Owls score 11 runs in the fourth inning.
Among the 17 hits were four home runs, one each by Kayla Boseman, Cheyanne Sales, Sydney White and Mabry Carpenter.
Boseman also had a triple and drove in four RBIs for the Lady Owls (23-4, 8-0). Sales had a triple and three RBIs. White drove in two runs with the homer and double and Carpenter also had two RBIs.
Sales leads the Lady Owls with eight home runs, White has seven and Boseman six. As a team, Ooltewah has 35 homers this season. Boseman leads the team with 31 RBIs while White has 29 and Sales 28.
Boseman has the team’s highest batting percentage at .517. Addy Keylon is next at .488 and has a team-high 42 hits, Sales comes in at .453, Sullivan at .410 and White .400.
Makayla Strickland collected two hits and scored three runs and Tyler Sullivan went 2-for-4 and scored a run.
The Lady Owls scored seven runs in the second inning and one in the third before making it a four-inning blowout following the 11-run outburst.
Ooltewah defeated Cleveland, 11-0, in the first meeting on April 10.
Morrow struck out two and notched her eighth win against one loss. It was her eighth complete game of the season and dropped her ERA to 2.94.
“Hadley was in control the whole game,” Lady Owls coach Jon Massey said. “She threw a lot of strikes early in the count."
In the first game with Walker Valley, the Lady Owls rallied from large deficits twice and pulled out a 16-15 victory at Jim Lovell Field. They will take a nine-game winning streak into Wednesday’s game and outscored those nine opponents by a combined 75-9.
Walker Valley had a nine-game winning streak going into Tuesday’s game against Soddy-Daisy.
Boseman, a Mississippi State signee who is 10-0 with a 0.79 ERA, is expected to pitch against Walker Valley on Wednesday. The hard-throwing right-hander has 107 strikeouts in 53 innings.
(Contact Larry Fleming at larryfleming44@gmail.com and on Twitter @larryfleming44)