Seniors Caroline Clark, Lea Crutchfield, Shelbi Bush after their final varsity softball game.

Softball season may not have ended exactly the way Moody’s Lady Blue Devils had hoped it would, but nobody was complaining too loudly last weekend after they finished as the Class 5A state runner-up.

After sweeping the first three games of the state tournament, Moody was defeated by Mortimer Jordan, 8-1 and 5-1, in the championship series, which was a rematch of the Noth Central Region championship the week before.  It was also Mortimer Jordan’s third state championship in four years.

The Lady Blue Devils downed Faith Academy in the semi-final game, 2-1, after defeating Hartselle, 2-1, and Hueytown, 5-4.

“I am extremely proud of these girls,” said coach Amanda Ellis.  “They were very underestimated from the beginning, and right off the top they started suprising people.  It was great to see that they didn’t care what people were thinking about them.  They had it in their heads that they were going to do it.”

Mortimer Jordan seemed to have the mental edge, though, by the time the two teams met again in the state final.

“We had beaten them during the regular season, but we’d just lost to them in regionals, and we weren’t quite over that mentally,” Ellis said.  “Plus, they had the momentum at the end of the first game.”

Having finished fifth in the state last year and third the season before, this year’s runner-up finish stands as a testament to overcoming adversity, she added.

“We had two serious injuries,  one player lost her father, and we had several cases of disaster with the storms, so we definitely had some adversity.  But you do what you have to do, and we worked through it.

“Our goals were to win our county tournament, which we did, and be one of the top two teams at regionals so we could make an appearance at state,” Ellis continued. “They wanted a ring and knew it would take a lot of hard work.  It came down to the last game, and we just kind of fell short.”