Jefferson County jumps out early; defeats Morristown East
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Jefferson County jumped on Morristown East for four runs in the top of the first inning and went on to thump the Hurricanes, 10-0, in five innings Tuesday evening at Sherwood Park.
The Patriots collected nine hits in racking up their 13th win against eight losses. They are now 5-3 in District Two 4-A play and are in second place, one game ahead of Morristown West.
For the Hurricanes, it was the 16th loss against just two victories and left them at 0-8 in district play.
Briley LaRue picked up the mound victory over Eli Seals. LaRue gave up just two hits before leaving with two out in the final inning. Jacob Shrader got the final out.
LaRue allowed just a first inning single to Isaac Greene and a third inning double by Ethan Shockley. He walked five and struck out five.
Seals faced just six batters and didn’t record an out. He walked three and gave up two hits before Jonah Carden came on in relief. Carden pitched into the fifth inning and Ethan O’Dowd got the final three outs.
Owen Grimsley and Beau Revord had a double and single apiece for the Patriots while Isaac Lawson smacked a solo home run.
Jefferson County coach Zach Reese said, “I won’t say it was easy but we got some early runs and that made it a low-stress kind of day for everybody involved.
“I thought Briley pitched a really good game for us,” he added. “It was kind of unfortunate what happened there at the end when he had the arm pain. He threw the ball well and had a low pitch count. We’ll just have to wait and see about the arm.”
Reese closed, “I thought we did a good job at the plate and played well on defense. This was a good win for us.”
East’s J. D. Newsom said, “We got behind early when we didn’t throw strikes and then we couldn’t get anything going at the plate.”
Maddux Rogers walked to start the Patriots’ first and Grimsley followed with a base hit. A single by Drew Potts loaded the bases. Revord walked to force in the first run and the next batter hit a shot back up the middle that went off the pitcher’s leg and scored another run.
Brody Carr drew another base on balls to force across the third run before Carden relieved. He walked Jace Dobbins to plate another run before getting three straight outs to escape the jam.
Greene singled with one out in the first but was picked off by catcher Lucas Havely before the next batter struck out.
After a scoreless second frame, the Patriots added three markers in the third. Carr singled and scored on a double by Landon Thomas. Lawson walked and both runners scored as Grimsley doubled off the fence in left field to make it 7-0.
East loaded the bases on three walks with one out in the bottom of the third but LaRue got the next man to fly out to left field and then came up with a strike out to keep the ‘Canes off the scoreboard.
After Jefferson County left the bases loaded in the top of the fourth, Shockley doubled to lead off East’s half of the inning. However, LaRue escaped again by getting three straight outs.
In the Patriots’ fifth, Lawson led off with a home run to left. Rogers walked again and Havely had a single. Revord’s hit scored two runs that turned it into a run-rule victory.
Softball: Morristown East 6, Science Hill 3
Morristown East had 14 hits on Tuesday evening and that was more than enough as they took down Science Hill.
Kylie Radar got the start in the circle for East and threw all seven innings. She gave up three runs, two earned, on 11 hits while striking out six.
Following three scoreless innings to start, East got on the board in the fourth with four runs. Those runs came from RBI singles by Ella Wampler, Kaleah Davis, Zoe Shelley and Radar.
Science Hill got two in the bottom half of the inning to cut into the lead, but East made it 6-2 in the fifth as Jaycee Hamilton homered and Hailey Hall had an RBI single.
Science Hill got one more run in the bottom of the fifth but Radar shut them down the rest of the way.
East will be back in action on Thursday, on the road against Sevier County. First pitch is set for 5:30 p.m.

