Northern Guilford softball needed two gritty wins over Southern to clinch TAAC Six

Northern Guilford softball had a standard to uphold, but doing it isn't easy.

The Nighthawks (8-5, 8-0) needed two one-run wins over second-place Southern Guilford (10-4, 6-2) to clinch at least a share of the TAAC Six 5A/6A Conference regular season title, with each team having two league games remaining. On Wednesday, they won 8-7 over the Storm on the road.

Southeast Guilford (5-9, 5-2) also has a chance to tie for first place in the conference. It will have played Northeast Guilford on Thursday, then concludes its TAAC Six schedule with Southern on April 21 and Northern on April 24.

"I mean, it truly means a lot," said senior shortstop Morgan Headen on capturing the conference crown. "Us coming in, we have six freshmen, so we are a very young team. We have come to the conference. We had to fight a lot. It wasn't just handed to us, so it feels amazing just to be able to play together and have good chemistry as a team."

Northern returned six starters from last year's team that finished 23-5, its best record in 10 years, tied for the old Metro 4A Conference regular season title, won the conference tournament and reached the NCHSAA 4A third round. The team had to replace ace pitcher Dakotah Wilkins, now at Catawba College. who went 19-2 with a 2.04 ERA while also batting a team-high .630 for the Nighthawks in 2025. The team now relies on six freshmen and sophomores to start with only three seniors.

For Headen (.667 batting average, 17 RBIs), a North Carolina A&T signee, expectations remained high seeing the young players work hard, but having a new lineup still took some adjustment. The Nighthawks lost four non-conference matchups over their first five games before winning seven of their next eight entering Thursday's non-conference game against Southern Alamance.

"I think just allowing (the younger players) to be comfortable with the upperclassmen was a big thing," senior pitcher Sydney Bassett said. "I know at the beginning, they were probably a little bit scared of us, but I think we had to learn how to come together as a team and we started to do this thing with our team called "Big-Littles," which is basically where our upperclassmen have a lower classman and you write them a little note or you give them a piece of advice before a game and I think that really helped bring our team bond together."

In the first Southern game, Northern trailed 9-7 through the top of the fifth as the Storm offense had 11 hits, including five extra-base hits off freshman Lindsay Griswold. One of those was a three-run, inside-the-park home run by senior Madison Goins, her eights homer of the season.

Northern made it 9-8 in the bottom of the fifth when Bassett scored on a passed ball after she lined a triple to left. In the next inning, the Nighthawks called on freshman pitcher Kaylee Testerman, who would finished the game allowing four runs, two earned, off two hits and five walks over three innings.

Trailing 13-12, Headen beat out an infield single to lead off the bottom of the eighth before an error at second base put runners on first and second. Freshman Jordan Krueger grounded to the pitcher, whose errant throw past first base rolled to the right field corner, scoring both Headen and Bassett for a walk-off win.

"Well, I think that game, it wasn't our best game," Headen said. "It started off very rough, but we actually came back, we actually started working together, learning how to hit the ball better, better pitch selection. So just coming together and being able to win that game, it was big…"

The two teams entered Wednesday's rematch just one game apart in the conference standings as Northern entered 7-0 and Southern 6-1 with a chance to for first place. In the second matchup, Northern went instead with Bassett at pitcher, while Southern again threw freshman Madison Smith.

Northern jumped to a 6-1 lead in the top of second inning as Headen's single to right scored a run after an error in right field and her triple to right center drove in two runs.

Southern made it 6-5 in the second inning off Goins' single up the middle, Smith's double to left, sophomore Janae Brown's infield single and sophomore Cemiah Barringer's bloop single to center field.

In the top of the third, Northern freshman Camdyn Coon slapped a single to left, and an error by the left fielder allowed a run to score and Coon to reach third. A groundout scored Coon to make it 8-5.

Southern narrowed the deficit to 8-6 in the bottom of the fourth on junior Summer Evans' sac fly (for the second out) to left field, but Bassett was able to get a fly out to center two batters later with the bases loaded to get out of a jam.

Still 8-6 in the bottom of the seventh, freshman Lyla Parks led off with a walk, before Goins' 1-1 pitch got hit hard to deep left-center. Northern left fielder Raegen Simmons picked up the ball near the wall, with Headen waving her arms up anticipating a relay throw.

Headen got the ball off one hop and threw out Parks in a bang-bang play at the plate. Bassett jumped up inside the circle upon seeing the umpire's call.

"When I saw the ball go up (on the hit), the first thing I said was, ‘Oh crap!' because I knew that we had a girl on base and we were up by two and they had no need to score at all because their No. 1 batter (Smith) was coming up," Headen recalled. "So when I saw the ball I just knew the girl was going ot try to go home because I heard the coach yelling in the back of my head.

"So I was yelling to Raegen to throw it to me, I turned around as fast as I could and got it home and thankfully she didn't slide."

Goins tripled on the play and scored on a triple to right to make it 8-7, but with two outs, sophomore Chloe Lyons, who is batting .581 on the year, grounded out to the pitcher to end the game.

Northern finishes its conference schedule with Eastern Guilford on April 21 and Southeast on April 24.

"This is a great team," Northern coach Russell Dorrell said. "Every time we play them, we are going to see good pitching with Madison…We need to see more pitchers like that before we start going into the playoffs, so it is great to see her again."

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This story was originally published April 18, 2026 at 1:18 PM.