It’s been a good week for Panther softball.
After a difficult stretch versus Pisgah and West Stokes, on the week of April 13 Franklin faced another busy slate, including a trip to Murphy and a Mountain Eight series with North Henderson. In outscoring foes 48-15 across three games, the Panthers snapped a four-loss streak in style.
On Monday they traveled to Murphy to rehash their 7-6 home win over the Bulldogs March 4. This time the Panthers clearly looked like the better team, leading 8-0 after four innings. They added seven more runs in the seventh to win 15-1.
Five Panthers posted multiple hits in the game, with Taylor Carrion going 3-for-5 with four RBIs and a home run. Kendall Rumans went 4-for-5 with two doubles and three RBIs, while Ashlyn McConnell and Alyssa Awtrey posted two hits and a double apiece. On the mound Suzanna Cabe tossed a complete game with 11 strikeouts.
The next night they traveled to North Henderson for the first of a two-game conference series with the Knights. There Franklin came out swinging, exploding for 12 runs in the first. They scored eight more in the next three innings en route to a 20-7 win.
Five Panthers posted multiple hits in the game, with Rumans and Cabe both going 4-for-5 with two doubles apiece, combining for nine RBIs and five runs scored. Awtrey and Chloe Lambert added three extra-base hits apiece, combining for five RBIs and seven runs scored.
Two nights later both teams reconvened at Macon Middle School for a swelteringly hot game. There Franklin took another early lead, plating four runs in the first led by doubles from Carrion and Meliah Mason.
Mason kept swinging in the third, belting a two-run homer to left-center field. After an Ilyssa Ezechel double on the next at-bat, Layla Maloy knocked a line drive down the first-base line, which evaded North’s right fielder for an inside-the-park home run.
Down 8-0, the Knights responded in the next two innings, cutting Franklin’s lead to 8-5 in the top of the fifth. Mason stayed red-hot in the bottom of the inning however, launching another home run to left-center.
Franklin kept rolling in the bottom of the sixth, plating four more runs off four singles and a Makenna Hursey double. North attempted a comeback with their own home run in the seventh, but Franklin stopped the bleeding to win 13-7.
“Right before my second home run, [head coach Bobby Bishop] was like, ‘Just get on base,’” said Mason after the game. “Then I hit it and I was like, ‘Is that good enough?’ and we just high-fived and kept on going. It just felt good; nobody really wanted to be here because it was so hot, and then the whole momentum turns and it’s like, ‘Woohoo!’”
With her first-ever two-home-run game, Mason helped improve Franklin’s record to 12-6 overall and 6-3 in the Mountain Eight, where they ended the week in third. After losing two games apiece to Pisgah and West Stokes, the senior said the team was glad to get back on track.
“It felt really good. We knew those were going to be two hard teams, but once we finally got back in our groove and everything was hitting right, we were just fine,” she said. “[The team needs to] just keep on working hard and have good attitudes every day.”
After their third straight blowout win, the Panthers returned to action after press time April 20, hosting Enka in a nonconference rematch of the Jets’ 10-8 extra-innings win March 19. They hosted archrival Smoky Mountain the next night in the first of a two-game Mountain Eight Conference series.