Bobcat softball team clinches first place in district
By Dan Roem
Playing the odds is the same in softball as it is in gambling: it does not always work.
Battlefield first-baseman Shannon Cleary presented that fact to Stonewall Jackson coach Jason Koch Friday night in Haymarket as part of the Bobcats’ 4-3 senior-night victory. Cleary delivered the game-winning run with a fly-out to left field that gave senior pitcher Megan Sutphin time to tag up from third base and score.
Koch had bet the Raiders had a better chance with Bobcat Cleary at the bat than with junior superstars Courtney Liddle and Brittany Black. The Raider coach had directed senior pitcher Melissa Kirby to intentionally walk both Liddle and Black, in order to get Cleary at the plate with one out.
“It didn’t work, but I’ll do that 10 out of 10 times,” said the Stonewall coach.
According to international softball rules, once a game passes the eighth inning, whichever batter made the last out the previous inning starts the subsequent inning on second base.
First-place Battlefield (17-3 overall, 12-2 Cedar Run District) and fourth-place Stonewall (12-6, 7-5) both tried bunting and failed in the bottom of the ninth and top of the 10th.
But when Bobcat coach Joe Schelzo called for another bunt with Sutphin at second base, third-baseman Kaitlyn Sileo dribbled back the pitch from Kirby, giving the Stonewall pitcher only time to throw out the senior at first instead of stopping Sutphin's run to third.
The Battlefield boo-birds hollered and jeered Stonewall for being afraid to face Battlefield’s two best hitters as Kirby then intentionally walked Liddle and Black. Waving off a suicide-squeeze attempt, Cleary walked over to Schelzo in the third-base coaching box to talk strategy.
Liddle, the team catcher and on-field coach, ran over from second base put her hand around Cleary’s neck, pressing her facemask against that of her long-time junior teammate.
“She is an amazing athlete,” Liddle said. “And I just told her, ‘You know you can do this. Just go out there and kick some butt.’ And she actually told Schelzo that she didn’t want to bunt. She was like, ‘Don’t bunt me, Coach! I’m going to hit this ball.’ And she did.”
Cleary laced Kirby’s first pitch into mid-left field. Raider Burgundy May waited under it, caught it and hurled it toward catcher Kasey Miller.
By the time the ball got through the middle of the infield through, Sutphin had already tagged up slid across the plate.
“Like, it shows teams you can’t walk Brittany and (me) to get to someone else. We’re still going to score runs,” declared Liddle.
Kirby pitched with the idea that she was just doing what her coaches asked of her.
“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do in that situation,” said Kirby. “There’s no way to tell what’s going to happen, so you’ve just got to do your best.”
In her typical fashion, Kirby pitched every inning of the 10-inning affair and had not given up a run since Stonewall tied the game up in the fifth inning.
She and Bobcat Sutphin both struck out five batters and walked two, though Kirby gave up six hits to Sutphin’s four.
Stonewall had a golden opportunity to take the lead in the top of the ninth when Black, who tosses with her right hand despite batting as a lefty, threw four straight balls to second baseman Krystal Smith. With runners on first and second, Black’s next 2-0 delivery to shortstop Susie Finzel sailed high, careening off the top of Liddle’s glove and toward the back stop.
That put Stonewall runners on second and third with no outs. Black finally gained control on her next pitch, which went for a called strike. Finzel battled off the next Black pitch for a foul before punching out on a high and inside strike three.
That’s when Black found her groove. She caught May looking at a full-count pitch right over the heart of the plate for another called third strike. In the tenth, she struck out the side on 12 pitches, thus earning the strike-out totals of both Sutphin and Kirby in only two innings of work.
“Our hitting discipline kind of went down the wayside there,” reckoned Koch. “We were swinging at bad pitches and letting ... strikes go down the middle.”
“It was her mental game today,” Bobcat catcher Liddle said of Black. “She was really stressed out and she went in (during) a really tough time in the game. She had to produce right off the bat and she’s still kind of rough and rusty from her [injury] break. So I basically told her, you know, ‘You can do this. Stay focused the whole game.’ And she was. She was like a rock out there.”