Three champs
Runs in each of first four innings create comfortable cushion for LeBlanc’s pitching mastery
Katy, Angleton and Huffman Hargrave win titles.
AUSTIN — It would be easy for the Katy softball team to fall into the trap of comparing every inch of its season to the 2015 state championship team.
No need to. The 2019 team’s numbers do more than enough talking.
This year’s outfit swept five series and outscored playoff opponents 108-18, culminating in Saturday night’s 8-2 victory over Klein Collins in an all-Houston Class 6A final at McCombs Field.
Four years after winning the program’s first championship, Katy has doubled up.
Title game MVP Alyssa LeBlanc allowed six hits, two runs and three walks with seven strikeouts for the complete-game win. Through four innings, LeBlanc hadn’t allowed a run and only gave up three hits and no walks while striking out four batters.
Klein Collins, which put 11 runs on the scoreboard against Comal Canyon in Friday’s 6A semifinals, scored twice in the fifth inning to trim Katy’s lead to 7-2. Mia Cantu’s RBI walk and Renata Boyd’s run-scoring single provided momentum.
Preventing that momentum from continuing was LeBlanc and the defense behind her. LeBlanc got her pitching counterpart Kenedy Hines to line into a double play while Klein Collins’ Katy Schaefer flied out to end the fifthinning threat.
Sacrifice bunts productive
It proved to be a potentially pivotal point in the game.
“Just to bear down and not push anything and stay relaxed like we had been doing the past five rounds,” LeBlanc said of the key to ending the uprising.
The way Katy (37-2) generated offense in the state tournament contrasted with how it has scored runs previously this postseason.
Friday’s 1-0 semifinal win over Keller came via Cait Calland taking home on a double steal in the sixth inning.
Katy coach Kalum Haack said building the 7-0 lead through four innings was about letting the short game open everything else up.
On Saturday, a pair of RBI sacrifice bunts from Calland and Chloe Woodward in the first two innings put Katy up 2-0.
The two-run third inning via another RBI sacrifice bunt from Calland along with LeBlanc’s runscoring single to right doubled the margin to 4-0.
In a three-run fourth inning, Katy’s Tori Whillock scored a run off a wild pitch. Chloe Cobb, who entered the weekend hitting .605 at the plate, contributed an RBI single for the Tigers.
Hines entered this game allowing no earned runs over her last 22 innings for Klein Collins.
“They never ever quit,” Haack said. “I think they were just determined this year that they were going to make this be their year because they had no other choice. They’ve done an excellent job holding each other accountable, making sure they work hard, making sure that they came up and took extra batting practice, extra throwing practice. Whatever needed to be done, they did it. They managed themselves.”
A second runner-up finish
There is little, if any, resemblance to the group of Tigers who won it all four years ago.
LeBlanc said it’s a huge feeling having their own banner to look at now.
Meanwhile, Klein Collins (38-3) has its second runner-up trophy since 2012. That 2012 team fell to Deer Park in another all-Houston final.
That 2012 team won 31 games compared to 38 for Klein Collins this year. By any measure, Klein Collins was among the best.
Klein Collins’ graduation was Saturday afternoon. The team’s seniors donned graduation gowns and caps and were honored on the field after the game.
“It just meant a lot because from the very beginning, we set our goals, we wanted to come to the state championship,” Hines said. “That was just our mindset from the very beginning. We put in all the effort and all the work during offseason, and it paid off. We just fell short.”
There were similar sentiments from Klein Collins coach Audra Troutman, whose had defeated Katy 12-2 in a February non-district tournament.
“They executed when they needed to and scored when they needed to,” she said of Katy, “and we just came up short.”