Nashville’s Renfro shines for South

LITTLE ROCK — Both teams in the second game of the Central Arkansas All-Star doubleheader got bases-loaded triples on Wednesday.

The South team just happened to get theirs from the smallest player on both teams - and it helped them take a second-inning lead in an eventual 8-4 victory at Little Rock Fair High School.

Sara Renfro, an infielder from Nashville, came to the plate with the bases loaded and her South team trailing 4-2 in the second inning. But she drove a pitch over the left-fielder’s head, it bounced once before hitting the wall, and when she finally stopped on third base, the South team had taken a 5-4 lead over the North.

“She swings with her hips and it’s very deceiving if you go by looks,” said South Coach Suzette Cox.

After the four-run second inning, South pitcher Kayla Payton, of Little Rock Central, settled and didn’t allow a run in the final four innings and the South added two runs - one coming from another triple, this one hit by Fordyce’s Sade Jenkins - in the fourth and another in the fifth to follow a first game that ended in a 5-5 tie.

Cox, who stepped aside after this season following nine years at Central, didn’t have a lot of time to learn some of the new faces she was coaching Wednesday. But she was told that Renfro, despite her size, was “a good all-around player.” She hit an infield single and scored on an error in the first inning before stepping to the plate in the second following four consecutive hits.

“She had just been hot the whole [day] and we decided to hit her,” Cox said. “She exploded into the ball and did what she was supposed to do.”

The South team needed those four runs in the second after the North team, led by Fair volunteer coach Virgil Jones, scored four runs in the top of the first.

Jacksonville’s Alexis House, Forrest City’s Julia Glasper and Des Arc’s Breyonna McCoy each hit singles off Payton to lead off the bottom of the first. Then, Jacksonville’s Haley Hickingbotham hit a bases-clearing triple to give the North a 3-1 lead. She then scored on a groundout to make it 4-1, but that’s the last the North got off of Payne.

Hickingbotham singled in the third and fifth innings to finish with five hits in the two games, but House’s second-inning double and Paige Sullivan’s fifth-inning single were the only other hits.

The first game ended in a 5-5 tie when the North team scored all of its runs in the fourth and fifth innings after the South took a 4-0 lead through three innings.

A’Diamond Johnson, of Dumas, singled in the fourth, before Tranice Hayes’ home run to left field got the North to within 4-2. Sullivan then reached on an infield single in the fifth to load the bases and Emily Holland and Johnson each reached on fielder’s choices as the North team threw out runners at the plate.

Sylvan Hills’ Alex Tessman then tripled to right field to score all three runs and gave the North a 5-4 lead. The South team tied it in the fifth when Payton singled, moved to second when De Queen’s Kelsie King was thrown out at the plate, and scored on Kera Hinds’ single.