When Ragland’s Lady Purple Devils lost the opening game of the state tournament, coach Jonathan Nix knew it was time for some brutal honesty.

“Coach (Rush) Rutledge and I got the girls together, and we said, ‘Look, here are your options.  You can either lay another egg and go home, or you can do what special teams have done, show the tremendous amount of character and grit, and come back to win this thing.”

The Lady Devils chose to be a special team.

After finishing as the North Central Region runner-up and dropping the state opener to Pleasant Home 2-0, Ragland pounded Fayetteville (20-0), Maplesville (13-2), and Athens Bible (14-0) and outpaced Kinston (4-2) in the semi-finals, earning a rematch with Pleasant Home in the championship game.

“Our girls played so good with their backs against the wall,” Nix said, noting that a loss would have ended their season and they’d have to beat Pleasant Home twice to win the Class 1A state title for the third year in a row.

“We wanted to come out hot and get them playing for Game Two.  Our goal was to get them to pull their starting pitcher, which they did in the fourth inning, and then their back was to the wall as much as ours was.”

Ragland won Game One 13-2 in five innings, and Nix said he could see “a little bit of fatigue” in his team as the second game started.  

Pleasant Home took an early lead before Ragland went ahead 4-2.  Although the Lady Devils allowed one more run, “once we got the lead, we kept it.  Our hitting went cold, and it was clear that the girls were just concerned with getting outs.  They really turned up the juice on defense the last three innings.”

Ragland outscored its opponents 67-10 in seven games to defend its status as state champion, an accomplishment Nix said was “as close as you can get to the first year we won it.  We peaked at the right time that year.  Last year, I never felt like we peaked or reached the potential that we had.  This year, we waited until the state tournament to peak again.”

Winning state also gave the Lady Devils validation after they failed to win this year’s region title, Nix added.  “But I told them after that last game at region, three years from now, nobody will remember who the region champion was.  But they’ll remember who won state.”