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More Softball

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• Lady Vols finish No. 14 in fastpitch coaches' poll

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University of Tennessee softball signee Cat Hosfield of Murfreesboro Riverdale High School suffered a fractured left ankle in two places Friday night during a game in Ocala, Fla.

She will miss the rest of the season.

Hosfield, who holds the nation’s single-season high school strikeout record with 659, will have surgery to reset the ankle according to The Tennessean and expects to be out at least 12 weeks. The state championships are in nine weeks.

The newspaper said the injury occurred on a pop-up slide on Hosfield’s double in the top of the first inning against Forest (Fla.). When Hosfield attempted to bounce up, her metal cleats gripped the dirt and second base and did not give.

“It all comes back to the metal cleats,” Riverdale coach Jeff Breeden told The Tennessean. “Before the injury, I liked us having them. But if these guys are doing a pop-up slide, they better not pop up. When her cleat hung, it broke the bones instead of rolling the ankle.”

This is the first year metal cleats have been allowed in Tennessee high school softball.

After Hosfield was taken to a hospital, her parents drove her 10 hours through the night to see Dr. Damon Petty, an orthopedic surgeon at Nashville’s Baptist Hospital, who will perform the operation.

“They can fix it up and she can play summer ball and she can play at UT,” her mother, Anne, told the newspaper. “We called (UT co-head coach Ralph Weekly) and he doesn’t seem worried about it. She just can’t finish her senior season, which stinks. She feels like she let her team down. ”