The Brownwood Lady Lions opened the 2024 softball season in dramatic fashion Wednesday night as, after a pair of two-run leads vanished, Jeniffer Romero’s walk-off RBI triple in the bottom of the eighth resulted in a 5-4 extra-innings triumph over the Jim Ned Lady Indians.
“It was definitely a dogfight and I think we’re going to see a lot of those this season so the girls are going to have to be tough, dig in their heels and go fight every single pitch of every single inning of every single game,” said Lady Lions second-year head coach Cherita Munguia.
With one-out in the bottom of the eighth inning, Mykaela Mendoza drew the eighth walk of the night for Brownwood (1-0). Then, with two down, Romero – who earlier drew three walks and reached on an error – lined a shot down the left field line, easily scoring Mendoza with the decisive run.
“She’s an advocate of her own swing and talks to me about what she sees,” Munguia said of Romero. “She added new things to her arsenal this year and one of those things is swinging flat footed and that’s a huge thing for us. I knew when she got in the batter’s box, you could see the confidence in her shoulders. She was the seeing the ball and the field well tonight, and I’m excited for her because she deserves that.”
The Lady Lions registered eight hits to go along with the eight walks and Jim Ned (0-1) committed a pair of errors, but Brownwood left nine base runners stranded.
Carlee Burks and Peyton Pena recorded two hits apiece, while Romero, Chloe Walls, Lila Mares and Jakayla Peek added one each. Romero also led the way with a pair of RBIs while Walls, Burks and Mares each drove in a run.
“We left way too many people on base, a lot were on walks, but any time we’re in a situation when we get two girls on base with walks in an inning we have to capitalize on it,” Munguia said. “We also tried to bunt a lot today and we had some successful ones, but we had too many that got fouled off that could have scored runs early in the ball game.”
Tynlea Wilson surrendered nine hits with two strikeouts and one walk in the circle, while leaving seven Jim Ned base runners stranded. Aside from a sloppy fourth inning in which Brownwood committed three errors that led to a pair of Jim Ned runs, the Lady Lions had only one other miscue the rest of the contest.
“Tynlea was lights out,” Munguia said. “She’s doing what we ask of her and really trying to work those corners. Tynlea is putting it in places where we can make plays, that’s what her job is and she did that really well.
“Defensively, we had a lot of bumps in the road in the scrimmage season, a lot of easy, manageable plays that slipped through our fingers and we fixed that tonight, but we have some other areas to work on.”
The Lady Lions grabbed a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first as Romero drew a one-out walk, Mares followed with a line drive single off Jim Ned pitcher Pyper Tilley, and Walls followed with an RBI double to left-center field.
Brownwood pushed the lead to 2-0 in the third as Burks led off with a single, moved to second when Romero walked again, and scored from second on an RBI sacrifice bunt by Mares as no one covered home plate once Burks rounded third base.
Jim Ned drew even at 2 in the top of the fourth as Libbie Brnovak led off with a double and then stole third and scored on an errant throw to the bag. Lauren Walker reached on another error, then scored from second on an off-target pick-off throw.
The Lady Lions immediately responded, however, as in the bottom of the fourth Pena led off with a double. Though she was later picked off second base, Wilson, Maitlyn Esquivel and Mendoza each drew walks to load the bases with two outs. Burks followed with the go-ahead RBI single, and Romero picked up an RBI on the fourth walk issued in the inning, pushing Brownwood back in front 4-2.
Brownwood maintained the lead until the top of the seventh where Baylee Shriver and Charli Lawson reached on consecutive one-out floaters just behind the first base bag. Bre Jones then ripped the tying two-run single to left field. Brnovak followed with a single to center field, but Romero fired to Walls at the plate, who ran down Jones for the second out of the inning, which kept the score tied at 4 and allowed extra innings to occur.
The Lady Lions are back in action at 5 p.m. Friday as they venture to Llano.
