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LEXINGTON – To say the third time was the charm would be cliché, and there was nothing cliché about the Holly Hill Academy Lady Raiders’ gritty run to the SCISAA Class AA softball state title.

In the longest SCISAA softball state tournament on record, Holly Hill (25-9) began Saturday morning with a loss to Pee Dee Academy (26-8) in a 9 a.m. game, and ended the tournament 15 and ½ hours later at 12:39 a.m. with a 5-3 state championship victory over Pee Dee. It was the team’s fourth-straight appearance in the title game, but the first time in three years that HHA managed to win.

The Lady Raiders trailed in each of their four pre-championship games Saturday – the loss to Pee Dee and wins over W.W. King, Carolina Academy and Colleton Prep – as well as each of their two games in the state title matchup. Three of the games went into extra innings.

“There’s no quit in these girls,” Holly Hill Academy head coach Henry Lockey said. “We had six seniors and five of them had a championship from 2005 and all of them wanted it for Megan (Mizell). She was the only one that didn’t, and now every member of our team has a state championship medal. These girls will be sore for the next couple of days, but I couldn’t be more proud of them. They flat played ball all day.”

It was Mizell, the lone senior on the team without a state championship medal, that put an end to the marathon tournament day with a tag on Pee Dee’s Caroline Shelley at third base, bringing Lockey his assistant coaches and the HHA players storming together on the field in celebration.

Katherine Rogers drove in a run to put Pee Dee up 1-0 in the top of the third of the final game, but HHA exploded, scoring four runs in the bottom of the inning. The first of those runs came when Katie Carpenter laid down a bunt to bring home Chelsea Nester, tying the game 1-1. Brittany Dantzler then singled to score Stephanie Peagler, and Carpenter scored on a sacrifice fly by Taylor Owens to make it 3-1. Dantzler came home on an error later in the inning to up the lead to 4-1. In the bottom of the fifth, Trisha Mauldin singled to driving in Dantzler to make it 5-1.

Prior to being tagged out, Shelley made things interesting in the inning, driving in Summer Collins to make it 5-3, but the deciding game was somewhat anti-climatic. While it was the longest, it may have also been one of the most peculiar tournaments in SCISAA history, a fact that was emphasized in the championships.  The Lady Raiders entered the state championship showdown via the loser’s bracket, needing to win twice to secure the title. Pee Dee needed just one win and while Holly Hill played right on up to the matchup, the Lady Golden Eagles had a nearly seven-hour break between their 13-3 smashing of Colleton Prep that qualified them for the title game and the start of play in the first championship game. But, it was the Golden Eagles that looked the worse for wear in what turned out to be an exciting game that sometimes bordered on horrific.

Pee Dee took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first in the opening title game thanks to an RBI off the bat of Katherine Rogers, but things began to take a turn for the worse in the second inning when shortstop Alex Rogers collided with an outfielder while trying to haul in a fly ball. Both Pee Dee players went down and a gruesome scene developed. Coaches raced out to the players and found Rogers writhing in pain. The Pee Dee star’s screams echoed off the brick walls of the press box facing the field and hushed the crowd as a near 40-minute delay ensued. Rogers mangled her leg – reportedly suffering a broken tibia – and was taken away to a hospital.

When action resumed Holly Hill came back to tie the game on a Mauldin RBI single that scored Nester in the top of the fourth to make it 1-1. Both teams continued to battle into extra-innings, going into the ninth under “International Tie-Breaker Rules,” before the game’s second ugly scene unfolded. Alex Pittman, who filled in for Powers at shortstop when she was injured, began hyperventilating on the field, vomited, and collapsed – suffering from an apparent anxiety attack.

Holly Hill had taken a 5-2 lead in the top of the ninth prior to Pittman’s ordeal, and tacked on two more runs – scores by Brittany Cheek and Dantzler – to seal the win at 7-2.

“It was unreal,” Lockey said. “All the emotions of the day, all the plays everyone made…players getting dehydrated and still wanting to play, players given their all.”

In the title clincher, Owens led HHA going 1-for-3 with an RBI; Dantzler was 1-for-1 with an RBI and Peagler, Carpenter, Mauldin and Nester each had a hit.

In the first game, Mauldin was 1-for-3 with three RBIs; Owens was 3-for-5 with an RBI, Peagler was 1-for-4 with an RBI, Carpenter was 2-for-4, Dantzler was 2-for-5 and Cheek, Mizell and Sara Shuler each had a hit.

Carpenter picked up the win in each of HHA’s five games on the day and worked all but three innings.

“My arm is kind of sore,” an iced-down Carpenter said following the win. “It’s sore, but it’s been more sore than it is now. I just have to keep the ice on it because it’s going to hurt.

“We’ve (played all day) before,” she said with a smile. “We worked toward this all year so were weren’t going to give up.”

The win caps a remarkable year for the Raiders. The HHA girls have won state titles in volleyball, track and softball and finished as runners-up in basketball. The school has hauled in five state titles this year.

T&D Sports Editor Brian Linder can be reached via e-mail at blinder@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5553. Check out his blog, Welcome to Linderland, at www.thetandd.com.

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