BRANDON — Porters Chapel Academy let one game get out of hand and another slip away Saturday at the MAIS Class AA fast-pitch softball tournament.

The Lady Eagles went two-and-out in the state tournament for the second year in a row, losing 14-3 to Tri-County and 6-4 to Amite School Center. Tri-County broke open a close game in the late innings, while Amite scored three runs in the bottom of the sixth to steal a win in an elimination game.

“They did not play a bad game. Even with the Tri-County game, the score doesn’t show how the game was. We kept it 6-3 for a while,” PCA coach Amanda Yocum said. “On the positive side, we lose one senior so we’ve got a lot coming back.”

The bigger disappointment for PCA wasn’t how its season ended on Saturday, but rather with how it ended over the past couple of weeks.

The Lady Eagles were 14-1 at point, but hit the wall recently. They were just 10-11 over their last 21 games, had to battle out of the losers’ bracket to earn a No. 4 seed at last week’s South State tournament, and then failed to improve on last year’s showing in the state tournament.

“I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if they get burned out, they get tired, we’re playing so much. For the last 2 ½ weeks we’ve been very inconsistent, giving up big innings to let teams that were very beatable teams win ballgames that we should have won,” Yocum said. “We’ve got a few small disciplines to correct, and I think they can be one of those teams that can contend with Tri-County, a state championship team season after season.”

After losing their first-round game to Tri-County, the Lady Eagles were facing another uphill climb at the state tournament. They needed to win two elimination games on Saturday, and then two more Monday to advance to the best-of-three championship series later in the week.

Instead, they never even made it to dinner.

PCA rallied from an early 3-0 deficit by scoring one run in the second inning and three more in the third. Hannah Embry walked and scored on a base hit by Chelsea Myers for the first run, then drove in three with an inside-the-park home run to give PCA a 4-3 lead.

Embry also kept Amite in check on the mound after her shaky first inning — until the sixth, at least.

Karlie Johnson belted a two-run triple to the gap in left centerfield to put Amite back in front, and then scored on a double by Klancie Fair to make it 6-4. The same combination had worked for Amite’s first three runs. Johnson was 2-for-4 with two triples and four RBIs, and Fair was 2-for-4 with two doubles and two RBIs.

Embry got out of the jam without any further damage, but PCA wasn’t able to respond. It went down in order in the top of the seventh to end the game and the season.

“I don’t think it was any big errors or we gave them any runs. They earned the runs that they got. They had some hits,” Yocum said. “It’s consistency. We’re not consistent at the plate. We’ll hit, have three or four runs in one inning, and then not hit for four innings and try to come back right there at the end. It just doesn’t work that way.”