With two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning, the North Carolina softball team had one final chance to come back against Longwood. As Kendra Lynch stepped up to the plate with two runners on, down 3-2, she had the opportunity to win the game for her team.
And with just one hit, the Tar Heels' uncharacteristic day at the plate erased. As Lynch took a big hack at a pitch high in the strike zone, the ball took off and didn’t stop until it cleared the right center wall.
Though the Tar Heels had managed just one run in the first six innings, it didn't matter after Lynch’s at-bat. The team walked off the field with a 5-3 win, no matter how ugly it was.
“Honestly, I was trying to swing at a good pitch,” said Lynch. “She was throwing the ball up a lot and I had been popping up a lot and had some poor at-bats before, so I was really trying to do something different in my last at-bat and make those adjustments.”
Lynch’s hit not only won the game for her team, but it also added another notch into an already stellar senior campaign. She is a consistent and powerful presence at the plate, hitting .405 on the year while still crushing 16 home runs.
“I’m having my best one yet, which is all I wanted," Lynch said. "I wanted to go out on a high note."
Before the hit that won the game, the earlier innings had been anything but usual for the North Carolina offense. After working some magic out on the bases in the first inning, the team failed to score and fell silent at the plate, only scoring one run in the third inning.
“This was not one of our most stellar hitting performances,” said head coach Donna Papa. “Typically, we are able to put hits together and score more runs than what we had going into the seventh inning.”
Even as the team struggled, Lynch’s teammates were confident she could get the job done, even on an imperfect day at the plate.
