By Robert Griffin

Sports Writer

Jessica Hall’s walkoff home has the Troup County 11-12-year-old all-stars on the brink of a state title.

With Friday’s game with Cherokee County tied at 3-3 in the final inning, Hall delivered a walkoff, solo home run to power Troup into today’s championship game at 11 a.m.

If Troup wins that game, it’s over. If Troup falls, a final game would follow.

Starting pitcher Jessica Perkins continued her dominating effort on the mound, collecting the win with nine strikeouts.

“We are playing really good right now,” head coach Sam Hubbard said. “Jessica Perkins pitched another fantastic game for us, and Jessica Hall came up big for us in that final inning.”

Troup will play either Cherokee County or Clayton County in the championship round. Troup has beaten both teams.

“We really want to win that state trophy,” Hubbard said.

It was a good day in Augusta for the Troup County 13-14-year-old girls softball all-stars.

Faced with elimination, the team completed an Augusta sweep, defeating the South Augusta All-Stars 10-0 in the first game, then going on to defeat West Augusta 8-6 to move on in the tournament.

“They were doing really good out there today,” head coach David Barrett said. “There was a lot of good hitting and a lot of good base running out there. We just played two all-around great games.”

Troup starting pitcher Audrey Barrett threw both games for the team, and picked up the wins.

“Audrey just flat out pitched two super games for us,” Barrett said.

With Barrett’s solid pitching from the mound, Troup also backed up the defense with as Barrett said was a “total offensive team effort.”

“It was a full team effort out there today,” Barrett said. “All the girls were playing together and backing each other on defense. There wasn’t any particular player or hit that really stood out today. It just was a complete team win.”

Troup will take on Clayton County at 10 a.m. today for a shot at a rematch with Spalding County for the state championship.

In Cordele, the Troup County 9-10 mite machine pitch girls team saw its season come to an end with a 13-2 defeat against Walton County.

Though the team had a few more hits than it managed in Thursday nights game, the team could not seem to cure the error bug, which led to the loss.

“We just couldn’t get over our errors today,” head coach Adrian Hill said. “We just didn’t do too good defensively out there today and that really hurt us. We misplayed some ground balls and didn’t get the ball back to the pitcher fast enough and they scored a lot of their runs that way.”

Hill went on to say that one bright spot from Friday’s game was the team’s play at the plate.

“One good thing was that we got a lot more hits than we did yesterday,” Hill said. “We got up this morning and did a little practice and worked on our hitting and I think that helped us out a lot today.”

Hill said that he was proud of his team’s effort in the tournament, and is looking forward to next year’s run.

“The one thing that we can take from this is that we will have some experience to move forward with next year,” Hill said. “That is a great thing.”