Frostproof rolls past Avon Park

Frostproof used a potent offense, solid defense and excellent pitching to defeat Avon Park by a score of 15-4 in a Class 3A-District 9 softball game on Friday night.

A young and relatively inexperienced Red Devils squad continues to play hard, but mental mistakes and fielding errors are proving difficult to overcome.

"It's the same stuff," Avon Park coach Rob Torres said. "We just have those one or two innings that we mess up on, and we have all those errors."

Avon Park looked like it might have a shot during the early stages of the game, keeping things close through the first three innings.

Frostproof scored first with a four-run second inning, but Avon Park rallied in the bottom of the third inning.

Cheyenne Mills was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning, advanced to second on a throwing error and moved to third base on a bunt single by Amber Tindell.

With one out, Sarah Hunnicutt lined a run-scoring single to center field to score Mills and move Tindell to third base.

Johnequa Perry followed with a sacrifice fly to plate Tindell and Katelynn Stoll capped the inning with an RBI single up the middle to pull the Red Devils within 4-3.

Frostproof kept the offensive pressure on and took advantage of numerous Avon Park fielding errors to pull away in the next several innings for the district victory.

Despite giving up 15 runs, Avon Park got a strong pitching performance from Ashley Carr.

"Ashley had an awesome game," Torres said. "She usually goes four or five innings but tonight she went all six and she could have gone all seven. I'm real proud of her."

Pitching wasn't the problem for the Red Devils, it was defensive mistakes and unforced errors that allowed Frostproof to score many of its unearned runs.

"It was fundamental and mental," Torres said when asked about his team's defense. "The fundamental comes from the first mistake and then the mental part sticks in their head and they keep messing up. It's hard to make up for the mistakes, especially when we fall behind.

"Once you're down three or four runs to a team as good as Frostproof, it's hard to make it up."

Jessica Smith had a strong pitching performance for Frostproof and earned the win by giving up only four runs to go along with her eight strikeouts.

Even with her fast pitching, Avon Park did enjoy some success at the plate and the Red Devils had runners on base and in scoring position in every inning except for the first.

"This is probably one of the better games we've hit," Torres said. "We had more hits in this game than we've had in awhile."

Tindell led the way for Avon Park at the plate going 3-for-4, with a run scored.

"We're going to just keep working," Torres said. "Drill after drill and practice after practice is what we're going to do.

"Everyone returns after this season and we're building the foundation for success."