'Well worth it': Huskies battle back, finish off dominant season

OXFORD – A little adversity was not going to stand in the Huskies’ way.

After falling in the first game on Friday afternoon, the Hewitt-Trussville High School softball team turned the tide and ran to a 16-4 victory over Fairhope in the Class 7A state championship game at Choccolocco Park in Oxford.

Fairhope beat Hewitt-Trussville 4-2 in the opener of the championship series, but the Pirates needed to beat the Huskies twice in the double elimination tournament. Fairhope even jumped on the Huskies 3-0 after two innings of the decisive contest.

That’s when head coach Taylor Burt gathered her starting nine outside the dugout and challenged them.

“I told them to close their eyes and I told them to imagine the girl they used to be at 5 years old,” she said. “I said, ‘Hey, go back to being that little girl.’ Let’s go dance, let’s go have fun, let’s go play this game and love and appreciate every single second of it.”

Perhaps it was merely circumstance, but the mental exercise paid immediate dividends. 

The Hewitt-Trussville bats came to life in the third inning. Anyce Harvey belted a two-run home run to left field to cut the deficit to 3-2. The Huskies piled up four more runs in the inning and sent 10 to the plate.

That Harvey homer set the tone for the rest of the contest. Tournament MVP Jenna Lord called it “an absolute momentum booster.”

“It lit a fire for everybody in that dugout,” Burt said. 

The floodgates opened and never shut. Hewitt-Trussville added another run in the fifth, exploded for six more in the sixth and three in the seventh. 

“I think we really kind of had to lose that first ball game for us to understand and really appreciate the year that we’ve had and really go through a little bit of adversity here at the end to have some fight. To end like that, you can’t ask for anything better,” Burt said.

Lord finished the championship game with four runs driven in, while Crystal Maze, Katelyn Murphy and Harvey all knocked in three. Maze capped off her illustrious Huskies career with a home run off a charter bus beyond the right field fence in the seventh inning. 

Madi Mitchell drove in two runs and made the all-tournament team, along with Sara Phillips, who pitched a complete game, striking out eight and allowing four runs on six hits. 

Tori Hyde started the first game Friday for the Huskies and pitched well for four innings — including a pair of sliding catches from left fielder Rubie Simon — before running into trouble in the fifth. Phillips came on to throw the final 2 1/3 innings without surrendering a run. Those two and Sarah Hindman, combined to pitch the majority of Hewitt’s innings all season and gave the Huskies a deep and effective pitching staff. 

Regarded as the favorite to repeat as Class 7A state champions, the team embraced the expectations and set out to match them.

The team finished the mission on Friday afternoon. It is Hewitt’s second state title in program history and second in a row, since there was no postseason last spring.

“I’ve never felt anything like it,” said Lord, who arrived at Hewitt-Trussville last season. “It’s amazing. I’ve been so blessed to be around such amazing girls. I couldn’t ask for a better senior season and I couldn’t ask for a better group of girls to do it with.”

Hewitt-Trussville (49-3-1) put together one of the most dominant seasons in recent memory, rolling through the state’s highest classification with seeming ease throughout most of the season. The Huskies’ only losses were to Helena (in a tournament) and Spain Park in area play.

At the state tournament, the Huskies picked up steam after a slow start. Hewitt-Trussville edged out a 5-4 win over Baker in its opening game of the tournament on a Lord walk-off single to plate Hannah Dorsett.

Riley Tyree singled home a run in the second to tie the game, Kenleigh Cahalan hit a sacrifice fly to give the Huskies a 2-1 lead, Cahalan tripled in a run and Lord scored another on a groundout to make it 4-1. Baker rallied in the sixth for three runs to tie it before the Huskies sealed the deal in the final frame.

Hoover held off the Hewitt wave for a few innings in the next game, but the Huskies eventually busted it open in an 11-1 win. Lord had a huge game, homering and driving in five runs. Mitchell hit one out as well and knocked in three runs. Tyree also had two RBIs. Phillips was dominant in the circle, allowing just one run on two hits and striking out nine in a complete game effort.

Hewitt-Trussville finished off the first day of the tournament with an 8-2 win over Bob Jones, one of the top two or three teams in the state all season. The Huskies piled up 14 hits and scored in five of their six at-bats.

In that contest, Mitchell knocked in three more runs, while Cahalan and Maze piled up three hits each as well.

Hewitt-Trussville put together its impressive campaign despite being placed on arguably the toughest path to do so. The Huskies competed in Area 6 with the likes of Spain Park — which saddled the Huskies with one of their losses — Vestavia Hills and Oak Mountain.

The Huskies finished in a tie for first in the area and went on to win the area tournament ahead of a stout regional tournament. Hewitt-Trussville competed against Vestavia Hills, Central-Phenix City and Auburn. They conquered that challenge in Montgomery as well, beating the beating Central 12-2 and Auburn 11-4 to cruise to the first qualifier position.

Burt has led the Huskies to heights not previously reached, winning a second state title in three years. But Friday night offered a first for her: getting showered by her team with ice from a cooler.

“Well worth it. I’d take it a hundred million times over,” she said.