Wawasee Wins Softball Sectional
May 26, 2017 at 4:02 p.m.
Wawasee Wins Softball Sectional
By Dale [email protected]
In the championship game of Class 3A Sectional 21 at Lakeland High School, a leadoff homer in the top of the fourth inning by Fairfield senior Samantha Shank trimmed Wawasee’s lead to 2-1.
The fifth-ranked Lady Warriors, the heavyweight in the sectional, responded with the knockout punch by scoring eight runs in the bottom of the inning en route to a 12-3 win.
Sophomore Beth Flannery started the offensive explosion with a single, and by the time it was over Wawasee sent 12 batters to the plate and forced Fairfield coach John Skibbe to make a pitching change.
“I’m still trying to believe it,” Wawasee senior Meghan Fretz said of the sectional championship, the Lady Warriors’ first since 2014. “The fact that it’s here, and the last time we did it was our freshman year, I’m gonna get emotional.
“We have that patch we always hit, we call it the hump. Today,?I thought we did really good getting over it.”
The Lady Warriors pounded out 16 hits in the win, while Fretz held the Lady Falcons to five hits in a complete-game pitching performance.
Seniors Ale Brito and Kayla White had three hits each in the win, while seniors Madie Wilson, Hannah Haines and Fretz, along with sophomore Flannery, had two hits each.
“This one means a lot more to me than it did our freshman year because we’ve been trying so hard the past two years to do this,” said Brito. “Fairfield was the one we always had to beat, and we just couldn’t do it. It would be by one run, or we’d beat ourselves. This year we did it.
“We have nine seniors on this team, and this is such a memorable moment because we’ve been playing together since we were eight years old.”
Wawasee is now 24-3 on the season and will play a one-game regional Tuesday night in Fort Wayne against either Concordia or Dwenger, who play Saturday night in the sectional final at Angola High School.
“We lived up to what we were supposed to do, and now we’ll just go to the next step,” said Wawasee coach Mike Barger.
“Defensively, we’re playing as well as anyone. I’ll stack my team up against anyone with the way we’re playing defensively.”
WAWASEE 12, FAIRFIELD 3
FF 000 120 0 – 3 5 1
W 200 820 X – 12 16 1
Fairfield – Taylor Graber (L, 3.1IP, 10H, 9R, 4BB, 1K), Kinsey Miller (2.2IP, 6H, 3R, 0BB, 0K)
Wawasee – Meghan Fretz (W, 7IP, 5H, 3R, 2BB, 4K)
2B – Jenean Schwartz (FF), Madie Wilson (W)
HR – Samantha Shank (FF)
Record: Wawasee 24-3
In the championship game of Class 3A Sectional 21 at Lakeland High School, a leadoff homer in the top of the fourth inning by Fairfield senior Samantha Shank trimmed Wawasee’s lead to 2-1.
The fifth-ranked Lady Warriors, the heavyweight in the sectional, responded with the knockout punch by scoring eight runs in the bottom of the inning en route to a 12-3 win.
Sophomore Beth Flannery started the offensive explosion with a single, and by the time it was over Wawasee sent 12 batters to the plate and forced Fairfield coach John Skibbe to make a pitching change.
“I’m still trying to believe it,” Wawasee senior Meghan Fretz said of the sectional championship, the Lady Warriors’ first since 2014. “The fact that it’s here, and the last time we did it was our freshman year, I’m gonna get emotional.
“We have that patch we always hit, we call it the hump. Today,?I thought we did really good getting over it.”
The Lady Warriors pounded out 16 hits in the win, while Fretz held the Lady Falcons to five hits in a complete-game pitching performance.
Seniors Ale Brito and Kayla White had three hits each in the win, while seniors Madie Wilson, Hannah Haines and Fretz, along with sophomore Flannery, had two hits each.
“This one means a lot more to me than it did our freshman year because we’ve been trying so hard the past two years to do this,” said Brito. “Fairfield was the one we always had to beat, and we just couldn’t do it. It would be by one run, or we’d beat ourselves. This year we did it.
“We have nine seniors on this team, and this is such a memorable moment because we’ve been playing together since we were eight years old.”
Wawasee is now 24-3 on the season and will play a one-game regional Tuesday night in Fort Wayne against either Concordia or Dwenger, who play Saturday night in the sectional final at Angola High School.
“We lived up to what we were supposed to do, and now we’ll just go to the next step,” said Wawasee coach Mike Barger.
“Defensively, we’re playing as well as anyone. I’ll stack my team up against anyone with the way we’re playing defensively.”
WAWASEE 12, FAIRFIELD 3
FF 000 120 0 – 3 5 1
W 200 820 X – 12 16 1
Fairfield – Taylor Graber (L, 3.1IP, 10H, 9R, 4BB, 1K), Kinsey Miller (2.2IP, 6H, 3R, 0BB, 0K)
Wawasee – Meghan Fretz (W, 7IP, 5H, 3R, 2BB, 4K)
2B – Jenean Schwartz (FF), Madie Wilson (W)
HR – Samantha Shank (FF)
Record: Wawasee 24-3
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