Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Wellington to make state final debut
VERO BEACH — The Wolverines never expected to get here.
That’s what made the moment so incredible.
Wellington will play for its first state softball championship Saturday. The Class 9A Wolverines took care of that Friday by coming back from a one-run deficit to defeat Plant City 6-1 at Historic Dodgertown.
Wellington will play Orange Park Oakleaf, a 10-0 winner over St. Thomas Aquinas, on Saturday at 5:35 p.m.
“Oh my God, this is awesome,” Wellington sophomore Katie Schmidt said. “This is what we all worked so hard for. At the beginning of the year, we had no expectations. We just came out, we got so far and we wanted to do something for our school.”
Schmidt certainly did her part, driving in the tying run in the fourth inning and then hitting a two-run double in a five-run fifth inning that saw the Wolverines break the game open.
“I went up there and I was just [thinking] I need to get something started,” Schmidt said. “We needed to start something. We were kind of dead in the beginning. I was like, ‘I want to start something for our team this time.’”
What Schmidt started, Kate Desimone finished.
The freshman pitcher struck out six and gave up four hits to help the Wolverines to an historic victory.
“It’s crazy,” Desimone said. “I never expected this to ever happen, and now we’re going to the championship game. We were happy just to be here today.”
As well as she pitched, it was Desimone who brought the Wellington crowd to a roar, racing home on a bunt by Cat Glenn to score the go-ahead run.
After Plant City took a 1-0 lead in the second, Wellington coach Mark Boretti said he had one message for his team.
“I just tried to tell them, ‘loosen up, loosen up,’ ” Boretti said. “We got the one run [in the fourth] but that next inning was the big one. We put some runs on the board and we did, we played loose.
“We did a little small ball, and I’m not a small ball guy, but we did it and it worked. We got some runs and now we go to the championship [game], the first time ever for Wellington High School.” OAKLEAF 10, ST. THOMAS 0: A 10-0 defeat certainly wasn’t the result the St. Thomas Aquinas softball team was looking for out of Friday’s state semifinals, but the Raiders were still able to take away something very valuable: Experience. Orange Park Oakleaf proved simply too much for the young Raiders on Friday afternoon, advancing to the Class 8A title game with a shutout victory at Historic Dodgertown.
But considering St. Thomas Aquinas’ roster is loaded with five freshmen, five sophomores, four juniors and only four seniors — Kaylei Wilcox, Kendall Richardson, Alley Masocco and Lindsay Gehring – there is plenty to build on for the future.
“I’m proud of these kids,” Raiders coach Bryan Baucom said. “We’ve had an upand-down year. We’ve had a lot of games where we played like today — a couple of errors here and there, they get a couple of bloop hits and things happen.
“But we went on a little run there. We grew up a little bit. We’ve got a lot of young kids and this is a good experience for them coming up here.”
Madison Santana and Kristen Sacca had the only two hits of the day for the Raiders, who also committed five errors and left five runners on base.
The game was a rematch of last year’s state semifinal that saw the Raiders get the win. Friday was a chance for Oakleaf to get a little revenge.