Rainwater, East douse Lincoln with late rally

Rain water on Monday meant Rainwater on Saturday for East Jessamine softball.

After moving Monday’s regularly scheduled game against Lincoln County to Saturday, the Lady Jaguars used the bat of sophomore Sarah Rainwater to emerge a 3-2 victor.

East entered the sixth inning in a scoreless tie. However, Lincoln got on the board with two runs in the top of the inning with help of errors on the part of the Lady Jags.

But, their late lead was short lived. Rainwater struck in the bottom of the inning with a two-run home run, tieing the game and putting it in the hands of junior pitcher Haylee Hamm to give her another opportunity to allow the team to prevail.

Hamm’s pitching in the top of the seventh stymied Lincoln, which was part of her 10 strikeout, four hit performance on the day.

With two runners in scoring position in the bottom of the seventh, Rainwater returned to the plate, connecting for a single to win the game for East. She finished the game 2-4 with three RBIs.

Junior Haleigh Fain also went 2-4 at the plate, reaching base on two singles. Other runs brought in by the bat of Rainwater included freshman Malin Miracle and senior Heather Welch, who each added single of their own during the game.

Even with the clutch hitting, though, head coach¿Tom Hamm believes his team needs to improve at the plate.

“I thought overall, obviously the pitching was good for us,” Coach Hamm said. “As far as the hitting, we didn’t hit as good as we had in our first two scrimmages ... but we did enough to win.”

The Lady Jags hit .250 in Saturday’s win, but were batting “about .444 as a team going in,” Hamm said.

“Our goals are to continue to pitch the way we’ve been pitching,” Hamm said. “We have several girls who had been hitting good who didn’t hit that well.”