The Hermleigh Lady Cardinals are back in the state championship title game after beating the Dodd City Lady Hornets 9 to 3. The Lady Cardinals got the bats going in the bottom of the fifth inning scoring 7 runs. Dodd City tried to come back but couldn’t get it done.
Hermleigh’s starting pitcher Summer Smith was in talks today as maybe the best pitcher in Class 1A as she tallied 11 strikeouts in the game. Smith added 3 hits and 3 RBI on the offensive side of things, too. Her teammates say she’s simply irreplaceable during times like this.
Sydney Hancock said, “Yes I would say in my opinion I would say it was her best pitching game all season personally. I think she did a very good job on placing the ball on where Winters was wanting it and if not we communicated on where she did cause it wasn’t somewhere that they swung at then we communicated that through Winters and then we got that out the next time.”
Lexi Greenwood said, “Gosh, Summer we are so grateful for her. I’m so happy she’s on our team, and we don’t have to play against her. She’s the building blocks of our team, ya know like if we’re struggling like we always have her and we can always count on her.”
Summer Smith said, “I’ve been working a real long time for this. We had practice last night and I didn’t do so well, so I had a little breakdown. But then today I came out, and I was like I gotta fix it and be better.”
The Lady Cardinals now are resting up and getting ready for a rematch of last year’s title game with the D’Hanis Cowgirls tomorrow starting at 4 p.m.