A year removed from winning the 3A state championship, the Orange softball team finds itself in a battle just to make the state playoffs.
With four games remaining in Big 8 Conference play, Orange is tied with Northwood for 4th place with a 5-5 league record. The top four teams in the Big 8 automatically earn a state playoff birth.
Northern Durham is in 3rd place at 6-3. The Knights and the Lady Panthers start a two-game series on next Tuesday. In addition, Northern is slated to make up a rained-out game with 2nd place East Chapel Hill Thursday.
Northwood starts a crucial series with East Chapel Hill on Wednesday at Wildcat Field. East travels to Pittsboro on Friday. After dropping both games to Northern Durham last week, the Chargers finish the season next week against Hillside.
64 teams will make the 3A state softball tournament. There are spots for wildcard teams that finish in 5th place in their respective conferences, based on their overall win-loss records. The regular season ends on May 3rd.
The falloff from winning a state championship isn’t surprising for an Orange team that has been scrambling to make up for losses both planned and unexpected.
From the time that Orange swept the 3A State Championship series from Piedmont last June at N.C. State’s Dail Field, the Lady Panthers fans and players knew what odds they faced in 2018. They understood the entire starting battery would be gone, and it was a battery that came along very rarely.
Catcher Mia Davidson, the 2017 North Carolina Gatorade Player of the Year, now leads the Southeastern Conference in three categories as a freshman at Mississippi State. Pitcher Christina Givens went 22-3 with a 1.36 ERA in 22 starts in 2017. Another senior, Abby Hamlett, voluntarily moved to shortstop at the request of Coach Eddie Davidson to accommodate freshman Grace Andrews at 2nd base. Hamlett responded by hitting a team-best .489 with 43 hits (also a team-high) and 22 RBIs, second only to you-know-who’s 39.
What wasn’t anticipated was Eddie Davidson’s departure just days before the season-opener against Eastern Alamance. Davidson moved to Washington, D.C. when he received a promotion with the National Letter Carriers’ Association, leaving assistant Henry Horn as the interim coach.
Now, Orange has a team with only four seniors on the roster with a 7-7 overall record going into a nonconference game at Eastern Guilford on Wednesday.
Last week, Orange swept Chapel Hill in a two-game series, winning 18-3 on Friday. Andrews went 3-for-3 with 5 RBI, while 1st baseman Jaden Hurdle went 2-for-3 with a double. Senior Olivia Latta-Harshaw went 2-for-2 with a double and 3 RBI.
On Tuesday, senior centerfielder Alysann Lloyd went 4-for-4 with 7 RBI as Orange defeated Chapel Hill 28-1. Sophomore Rachel Tilley hit a two-run homer to centerfield.
Hurdle, who has started eleven games as pitcher, is the leading hitter on the team with a .432 average. She also leads the team with 19 hits. Freshman Emma Puckett is hitting .415 with 13 RBIs. Junior Alisha Pettiford, playing 1st base in Hurdle’s absence, is hitting .343 and leads the team with 16 RBIs and two home runs.
