Shelby County softball wins area tournament title, advances to regionals

Published 10:41 am Wednesday, May 4, 2022

By Alec Etheredge

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By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Managing Editor 

COLUMBIANA – The Shelby County Wildcats are headed to regionals after a dominant showing at this year’s area tournament on Tuesday, May 3.

Hosting the area tournament, the Wildcats took advantage of a big home crowd by winning three consecutive games to take home the Class 5A, Area 8 Championship.

With that, they also earned a trip back to the regional round of the playoffs where they’ll hope for redemption after coming up one win shy of a spot at the state tournament.

During this year’s area tournament, the Wildcats stormed through the winner’s bracket to claim the area title, starting with a 25-3 victory against Talladega in the opening game.

That put the Wildcats a win from a regional spot and a win from a spot in the area championship game.

Taking on Sylacauga, they held the lead throughout, but the Aggies tied the game 4-4 going to the fifth inning.

In the bottom of the fifth, however, Shelby County broke the two with back-to-back RBI singles that put them in front 6-4.

From there, they got the final six outs of the game defensively to cement the win and a spot in this year’s regional tournament.

The Wildcats also advanced in the winner’s bracket, meaning they had two chances to win one game for the area title.

But they only needed one.

Taking on Central-Clay County, Shelby County put together its second 25-plus run performance of the day en route to a dominant 26-2 victory.

The Wildcats scored three in the first and led 3-1 after one inning of play, but they then scored nine in the second and 14 in the third to pull away for a three-inning 24-run win to claim the area title.

In the win, Shelby County had six doubles and four home runs as part of a 16-hit performance.

The Wildcats will now head to regionals hoping to redeem a 10-3 loss to Moody last year that put them out of the postseason.

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