Manchester Lady Greyhounds’ Pigeon Forge trip builds memories, drops games

A trip bigger than the scoreboard

Manchester’s annual run to the Cal Ripken Experience in Pigeon Forge is built around more than wins and losses. Coach Matthias Applegate again lined up varsity and junior varsity games for the Lady Greyhounds, giving Manchester High School players a weekend that mixed competition, travel, and the kind of shared experience that can hold a small-school program together.

That matters in Adams County, where each softball program carries more than its own schedule. Manchester is one of four county teams in the Southeast District, alongside North Adams, West Union, and Peebles, so the Lady Hounds’ Tennessee trip fits into a wider local pattern of trying to build teams that can handle postseason pressure, unfamiliar opponents, and long road weekends. The point is not simply to collect games. It is to create a setting that tests discipline and deepens the team’s identity.

Why the Ripken Experience keeps drawing teams back

The setting itself helps explain why programs return. The Ripken Experience in Pigeon Forge opened in March 2016, and Ripken Baseball says the complex originally had six turf fields before a 2023 expansion brought the total to 10 playable fields through renovated space at Wear Farm City Park. The venue is designed to feel like a destination, not a stopover.

Ripken Baseball also markets the trip as a full experience, with flexible schedules, guaranteed games, walk-up music, and player announcements. For high school athletes, those details matter because they change the feel of a weekend from a routine doubleheader into something closer to a showcase. For Manchester, the result is a trip that gives players exposure to different opponents and a stadium-like environment they do not get every week in southern Ohio.

How Manchester played in Tennessee

The Lady Hounds’ results were uneven, but the box scores show a team that kept creating offense even when the final margins grew. The varsity opened by losing 7-5 to the Homer-Center Lady Wildcats after trailing 4-2 through four innings. Manchester still piled up 11 hits in that game, with Peyton Hayslip and Elliana Applegate each finishing with three hits, and Hayven Newland adding two hits and extra bases.

The offense stayed active the next day against the Scott County Lady Cardinals, when Manchester collected 10 hits in a 15-5 loss. Addilyn Hunter, Elliana Applegate, and Peyton Hayslip each contributed multiple hits, a sign that the lineup was producing contact even against stronger finishing innings from the opposition. The junior varsity also took two losses to Scott County, falling 7-0 on Friday and 14-2 on Saturday, extending the weekend’s learning curve across both levels of the program.

What the trip shows about the team’s season

The Tennessee weekend did not end with momentum on the scoreboard, but it did not erase what Manchester had already built. After the trip, the Lady Hounds returned to Adams County and fell 8-2 to the Lynchburg Lady Mustangs, a result that dropped them to 7-4 on the spring and handed them their first Southern Hills Athletic Conference loss of the year. That loss also provides a clean snapshot of where the program stood: good enough to start strong, but still facing the kind of tests that separate a fast start from a lasting season.

The road trip also looks different when viewed against Manchester’s recent history. In 2025, the Lady Hounds returned from Pigeon Forge with a 4-2 record after losing two games in Tennessee, then rolled through the pre-trip Ohio schedule with four straight run-rule wins and a combined score of 66-2. In 2024, they came home from Tennessee and quickly answered with a 15-2 win at West Union in five innings after their trip losses. And in 2022, Manchester went 3-0 at the Cal Ripken Experience, proof that the annual Smokies trip has produced a wide range of competitive outcomes over time.

That range is part of the value. A school does not travel to Tennessee because the result is guaranteed. It travels because the games are different enough to expose strengths, spotlight weaknesses, and give players something to carry back into conference play.

What Adams County gains when programs travel

For Adams County readers, the larger takeaway is that trips like this act as an investment in the local sports ecosystem. Manchester, North Adams, West Union, and Peebles all feed the same small-school environment, and every chance to play outside the usual circuit can help a team mature faster. A weekend against out-of-state and out-of-region competition gives players a chance to respond to different pitching, different styles of play, and the pressure that comes from playing in a major tournament setting.

That exposure has practical value. It can help a roster stay engaged during the grind of a long season, it can build trust between younger and older players, and it can make the return home feel more urgent. When the Lady Hounds came back from Pigeon Forge and then met Lynchburg, they were not just resuming a schedule. They were carrying the lessons of a weekend that tested how they handled adversity, adjusted at the plate, and stayed together through a pair of tough losses.

The bottom line for Manchester

Manchester’s Pigeon Forge trip did not deliver a winning record, but it did deliver what the program appears to value most: meaningful games, strong contact at the plate, and another layer of experience for a team trying to grow beyond its early-season start. The Lady Hounds came home with losses to Homer-Center and Scott County, and the junior varsity came home with its own pair of defeats, but the weekend also gave the roster live reps in a setting built for high school softball at scale.

For a small county program, that is not a cosmetic getaway. It is part of the work of building a team that can survive the pressure of conference play, respond after setbacks, and keep enough depth and confidence to matter when tournament time arrives.