4A DII State Champs: Liberty Lady Panthers

AUSTIN — After years of knocking on the door, Liberty is once again a state champion.

The Lady Panthers returned to the mountaintop Friday afternoon at Red & Charline McCombs Field, overwhelming Brock 12-0 in six innings to capture the UIL Class 4A Division II State Championship. The victory marked Liberty’s fourth state title, adding to championships won in 2018, 2021, and 2022.

The road back to a championship was anything but easy.

Since winning the 2022 title, Liberty reached the state tournament in 2023, 2024, and 2025 but left Austin without a championship trophy. This season, the Lady Panthers returned determined to finish the job, and they did so in emphatic fashion.

Liberty entered the championship game against a talented Brock squad and wasted no time taking control.

Kylee Bishop scored the game’s first run in the opening inning when Kinley Brashier delivered an RBI single, giving Liberty a quick 1-0 lead. The Lady Panthers never looked back.

The offense continued to roll in the third inning.

Brashier tripled to right-center field to score Bishop before Abbie Key followed with an RBI double, stretching the advantage to 3-0.

Liberty added two more runs in the fourth inning when Bayleigh Taylor ripped an RBI triple down the right-field line and Bishop added a sacrifice RBI to make it 5-0.

Then came the knockout punch.

The Lady Panthers exploded for four runs in the fifth inning and three more in the sixth, turning a competitive championship game into a celebration. Taylor delivered a two-run double in the fifth before Bishop followed with a two-run single. In the sixth, Jessie Fain drove home a run before Taylor capped her remarkable day with a two-run single.

When the dust settled, Liberty had piled up 12 runs on 17 hits while striking for seven extra-base hits. The Lady Panthers hit .486 as a team and went 8-for-17 with runners in scoring position in one of the most dominant offensive performances ever seen in a UIL state championship game.

While the offense grabbed headlines, the story of the game belonged to junior pitcher Bayleigh Taylor.

Taylor was named the State Championship Game MVP after dominating both in the circle and at the plate. The junior tossed a complete-game two-hit shutout, striking out seven while allowing just two walks over six innings. She needed only 84 pitches to silence Brock’s offense.

At the plate, Taylor finished 3-for-5 with a double, a triple, and five RBIs, producing one of the most complete championship performances of the season.

Bishop was nearly as impressive, finishing 3-for-5 with two doubles and three RBIs. Brashier collected three hits, including a triple, and drove in two runs. Key added two hits and an RBI, while Bella Elliott contributed a pair of doubles as Liberty’s lineup produced hit after hit throughout the afternoon.

Brock entered the championship game with a 32-11 record and one of the state’s top pitching staffs, but the Lady Eagles simply had no answer for Liberty’s relentless attack. Trinity Franklin and Jayci Smith recorded Brock’s only two hits of the contest.

Defensively, Liberty was flawless. The Lady Panthers did not commit an error and limited Brock to a .100 team batting average. Brock finished 0-for-4 with runners on base and never advanced a runner past second base.

And it ended with Liberty celebrating its fourth state championship in program history.

	1	2	3	4	5	6		R	H	E
Liberty	1	0	2	2	4	3		12	17	0
Brock	0	0	0	0	0	0		0	2	0

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Top Performers

Liberty
• Bayleigh Taylor (MVP): 6 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 7 K; 3-for-5, 2B, 3B, 5 RBI
• Kylee Bishop: 3-for-5, 2 doubles, 3 RBI
• Kinley Brashier: 3-for-4, triple, 2 RBI
• Abbie Key: 2-for-4, double, RBI
• Bella Elliott: 2-for-4, double

Brock
• Trinity Franklin: 1-for-2, double
• Jayci Smith: 1-for-3