Washington puts an end to Lady Hawks storied season

Great Season

"We had a great season,. And that’s what I told them. I told them there was nothing to hang our heads about, it was a great season. We accomplished a lot."”

Jason Hawk, Central Lee Head Coach

WASHINGTON — One bad inning ended Central Lee’s softball season.
But coach Jason Hawk reminded his team that inning should not take away what the Hawks accomplished this season.
Washington used a seven-run second inning to take a 10-1 win in Thursday’s Class 3A Region 8 quarterfinal.
The Demons (24-12) will play at Davenport Assumption (30-6) in Saturday’s semifinal.
Central Lee (21-9) ended a brilliant season that included a 12-0 mark on the way to the SEI Superconference South Division title, the first league championship for the program since 1979.
What the Hawks accomplished, Hawk said, should not be forgotten.
“We had a great season,” Hawk said. “And that’s what I told them. I told them there was nothing to hang our heads about, it was a great season. We accomplished a lot.”
What was painful for the Hawks was how the game got away in the second inning. The Demons had two hits, but thrived on the five Central Lee errors and a couple of mental mistakes that were just as painful.
“Once you have one error, one thing, go wrong, it just keeps going and going,” Hawk said. “And that’s what happened in that inning.
“The thing about it was we had mental mistakes, and those can be harder to overcome than the physical ones. You’re going to have the physical ones, but the mental ones are harder to come back from sometimes.”
The game was tied at 1 when the Demons took control. They added two more runs in the third, then Central Lee pitcher Everlee Harvey allowed just two hits over the final 3 1/3 innings.
“This team has never given up,” Hawk said. “We’ve been down seven, eight runs before, and we’ve come back. And that’s the thing with this team — there’s no give-up in them.
“Take away that second inning, it would have been a close game. We go into the last inning down 3-1 or something like that, anything is possible. But like I said (to the team), that’s how softball goes sometimes.”
Central Lee’s lone run came in the second inning, when Bailey Schwartz walked, stole second, move to third on a groundout, and scored on Harvey’s groundout.
The Hawks, who led Class 3A with a .377 batting average, had just two hits — a single by Jaci Hawk in the first inning and a single from Harvey in the fifth. Washington pitcher Bella Salazar struck out four.
“Their pitcher kept us off balance,” Coach Hawk said. “We came into the game ranked first in 3A in batting average, and it didn’t show tonight, because of how they played on defense, and how they pitched.”
Washington had nine hits, eight coming from 1-2-3 hitters Leighton Salazar, Ella Greiner and Haley Mitchell.
The Hawks lose four seniors — Harvey, Schwartz, Alix Congdon and Abby Simmons.
“There’s only going to be one winner at the end of it, and unfortunately it wasn’t us,” Hawk said. “Like I said, you can’t hang your heads on one game, or one thing. You have to look at the overall picture.”