Binion Blast Carries Lady Wildcats to 1-0 Win Over Lady Raiders
by Mike McGee [Photos]
Tullahoma Lady Wildcat Chelsea Jones struck out 14 in a 1-0 win over Coffee County Tuesday night.
  With one swing of the bat, Sarah Binion created a memory for a lifetime.
  The Tullahoma Lady Wildcat senior came to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning in a 0-0 game, and with that one swing, crushed a long homer over the center field fence to end the game in dramatic style.
  The 1-0 win not only gave the Lady Cats a win over county rival Coffee County, it kept them undefeated in district play at 6-0 with six more regular-season games to play. The Lady Raiders dropped to 2-4 in district play with the loss.
  It was an old-fashioned pitchers’ dual from the start with Tullahoma’s Chelsea Jones and Coffee County’s Kristen Swann mowing down hitters. Jones was overpowering with 14 strikeouts, no walks and three hits. Swann was not as overpowering in terms of strikeouts with four, but she allowed only five hits, including Binion’s game winner, and kept Lady Cat hitters off balance most of the night.
  The Lady Raiders also came up with a couple of great defensive plays. The first came in the fifth inning when Stephanie Daniel had a one-out hit for Tullahoma, and after pinch runner Kirsten Brown was sacrificed to second on Whitney Scott’s perfect bunt, freshman Emma Chessor came to the plate and nailed a fly ball to deep left-center that center fielder Whitney McWhorter ran down and caught at the fence.
  Then, in the bottom of the seventh Lady Wildcat Erica Duke hit a laser shot to right to start the inning, and right fielder Jessica Downs made a leaping catch on a dead run for the out. Two batters later, however, Binion took away any opportunity for fancy glove work when she walloped a one-strike pitch long and high over the center-field fence.