October 18th was a monumental day for Putnam County High School’s softball seniors.
The Lady Eagles were at the State Class 2A-G tournament at the Academy for Classical Education (ACE) in Macon, the first round of 2022 state playoffs.
Everyone on the team, but especially the seniors, suspected it might be the last time they all played together as teammates.
Through the regular season, the Lady War Eagles had fought their way to six Region 4-AA victories, giving them a winning record of 6-4 in league play, but finishing 9-13 overall. All games were not reflective of the team’s overall abilities, though, it just seemed like a couple of wrong plays on their side of the ball and the other teams’ intense defenses were hard to come back from.
In Macon, the Lady Eagles played Brantley County first, battling to run the bases, but never quite made it in.
Ultimately, the game was called 15-0 in favor of Brantley.
State playoffs use a double-elimination format, though, so despite the loss being obviously discouraging, the girls still had a final game to take on together that day. The next game for Putnam was against the Cook County Hornets, fresh off a 12-0 loss to the host team.
Despite the loss, the Hornets turned out to be every bit as strong defensively as Brantley, and unfortunately, the Lady Eagles were not able to recover from their own small mistakes. The only bright point came when junior Sam Spisak knocked a home run out of the park. It marked both her first and final homer of the season and made quite a statement for her to end on.
Cook won the game 19-1, but by that time the score mattered very little to the Putnam seniors.
This was their final game together after having played with and for each other throughout their entire high school careers. These girls were close, on and off the field.
Cherish Rowell, the Lady Eagles’ usual third baseman, had an injury, leaving her to only watch her teammates play their final game. The tears were contagious for these girls as they hugged it out. It was a hard, defining moment as they literally watched one of the biggest facets of their high school experience come to an end.
In further tournament play, Brantley lost a close 7-6 match against ACE, which then pitted Brantley and Cook against each other, with Cook riding an 11-1 win into the weekend’s final against ACE. That was the end of their scoring, though, as ACE earned an 8-0 win to reach the next round of state playoff action.