Dixie Darlings Are World Series Bound, Again

The Jasper County Recreation’s seven and eight year-old girls softball team has won the state championship and will travel to Sumter, S.C. for the Dixie Youth World Series July 31 through August 5.

State championship teams from 11 states including Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida will participate in the double elimination tournament. The tournament will be broadcast live on the internet at: www.jockjive.com.

The team earned its way to the World Series last week by going 5-1 in the state tournament. In the young ladies’ first three games they defeated Whitfield 14-6, Dalton 13-12, and Monroe 16-11. In their fourth game they lost to Whitfield 12-1, but then went on to defeat Dalton 17-1, and won the championship in the final game by defeating Whitfield 17-12.

Coach Karla Tuggle said, “There were three teams with only one loss each so there was a drawing for the bye. Unfortunately, we didn’t draw the bye and had to play Dalton at 9 a.m. Sunday morning. We did win, but had to play Whitfield one hour later, They were a great team but we came out with a 17-12 win and won the state championship.

“To win this tournament was very gratifying since some of the other teams had a pool of 350 players to pick from while we had about 50. In the championship game against Whitfield, which was a better team than some we faced in the World Series last year, they had us down 5-0 at one point, but our girls never gave up and just used fundamentals to go ahead and win the game.”

As far as how the team intends to play in the World Series, Coach Tuggle said, “We’ll play fundamental ball, and we’ll play one game at a time. We’ll enjoy the love of the game and have fun.”

Members of the championship team include (front row, left to right) Gracie Hunt, Destiny Cook, Mackenzie Tripp, (second row) Erin Carter, Madison Abbott, Kenzie Abbott, Hailey Hooper, (third row) Jade Cole, Tayloir Lawrence, O’neil Sealy, Annie Corbin, Lucy Tuggle, and coaches, (back row) Karla Tuggle, Stephen Hooper, Bob Tuggle and Grant Dutton.

The Jasper nine and 10 year-old team won their first game of the state tournament 14-6 over Taylor County, then lost to Whitfield 8-5, and to Monroe 5-4 in overtime. The team was awarded the tournament’s Sportsmanship Award.
The 11-12 year-old team lost their first two games and were eliminated. However, they were both close games as they lost 8-5 to Columbia County and 10-9 to Crawford County.

(See those team pictures and sportsmanship trophy on page 13 of today’s paper.)