Armstrong advances on junior’s ‘best game,’ 3-2
After averaging 10.5 runs per game on its way through the postseason, Armstrong only needed three on Monday to defeat Penn-Trafford and secure a spot in the PIAA Class 5A final Thursday at Penn Stat.
Jenna Clontz, who hit a walk-off home run when the teams met in the WPIAL championship, led off the sixth inning with a double before scoring on a Jessica Pugh single to right, with the late RBI giving Armstrong ( 23- 4) a clinching 3- 2 victory at Mars High School. It was Armstrong’s first lead of the game.
While Penn- Trafford’s Mia Smith held a potent River Hawks attack down for most of the game, Armstrong coach Doug Flanders thought junior Cameryn Sprankle out-dueled Smith with her “best game of the year.”
“She was ready. She played them once. She knew what to expect,” Flanders said after the win. “When we play a better team, that’s when Cam gets better.”
Penn- Trafford ( 20- 4) jumped on Sprankle early with two runs in the first, courtesy of a two-out, tworun bloop single by Hannah Allen. After that, Sprankle put up what Flanders described as a “beautiful” line of zeros on the scoreboard.
She allowed five runs to the same Penn- Trafford team in the WPIAL championship, so what did she do different this time around? She trusted her goto pitch — the changeup.
“I was scared to throw it last game because these are big hitters. If you screw it up, that could be bad,” Sprankle said. “I trusted it, I trusted the calls, I trusted myself, and I just took it an inning at a time.”
Allowing two runs to score on “weak stuff” didn’t faze her, and she buckled down to blank the Warriors the rest of the way. Sprankle tacked on four strikeouts while the Armstrong offense clawed back into the game.
“[Our hitting] was still very good, but you know, it was zero, zero, zero,” Sprankle said. “So I’m like, ‘This is my time. This is my moment.’ And I just had to take care of it.”
Armstrong loaded the bases with two outs in the bottom of the third, but a soft ground ball back to Smith ended the threat. In the next frame, the River Hawks finally got on the board.
With the bases loaded and two outs once again, Isabella Atherton smashed a first -pitch double to the wall to even the score at 2-2.
Penn-Trafford had runners in scoring position with two outs in each the fifth and sixth innings, but Sprankle induced a pair of pop flies to keep it knotted.
Clontz and Pugh came through in the bottom of the sixth to break through.
“Mia Smith is a really good pitcher,” Flanders said. “It took us one time through the batting order to adjust. But then you could see us getting traction. You could see us starting to barrel the ball. And we got enough to win.”
Armstrong had a string of painful second-place finishes in 2021. Flanders and the River Hawks were second in their section, runners-up in the WPIAL and runners- up in the state championship.
They head to Penn State Thursday after flipping that script, thanks to a “silver to gold” motto throughout the year.
“Pretty crazy that that’s our rallying cry ... and here we are with a chance to do it,” Flanders said. “How many teams could say that? First in the section, first in the WPIAL and now we’re going for first in the state. Couldn’t be prouder of this team.”