LADY HAWKS ADVANCE TO STATE,
COMMERCE, Texas—The Region II-4A crown belongs to the Pleasant Grove softball team.
The eighth-ranked Lady Hawks swept the regional finals series over No. 6 Krum with a come-from-behind 3-2 victory Saturday at Texas A&M University-Commerce to run its unbeaten playoff streak to eight games.
PG (18-6) advances to the 4A state softball tournament next week in Austin for the first time in school history. The Lady Cats’ season ends at 31-6.
“We wanted to approach today like we had lost Game 1,” said Pleasant Grove coach Blake Worley, whose team pulled out a 4-3 win in the series opener Thursday. “We wanted to take Game 3 out of the equation. We’ve approached every playoff game as win or go home, and several have been one-game series. That approach has worked for us.
“These girls are just clutch when they have to be. We started off a little slow but didn’t get rattled when Krum took a 2-0 lead. We settled down defensively and settled down in the circle; we needed a couple of innings to get a feel for the umpire’s strike zone.”
After a rocky start, junior pitcher Madison Haltom settled down to allow just one hit over the last four innings, PG scored three unanswered runs in the middle innings to erase an early 2-0 deficit and, as usual, the Hawks had players step up in key moments to secure the win.
Pleasant Grove’s two seniors—Mary Kathryn Kyle and Aubrey Ashby—played a part in the go-ahead and eventual game-winning run.
After the Hawks tied the game in the third, Haltom walked on four pitches to start the bottom of the fourth. Kyle—the No. 9 batter—lined a hit into right-center and hustled for a double, moving courtesy runner Caylie Authement to third. Ashby drove in the run with a sacrifice fly to deep center.
“With the hit, I got caught up in the moment of doing something to benefit my team, that I heard my coach say ‘go, go, go,’” Kyle said. “The girl in front of me was running, and I just didn’t think about it and kept going (to second). We were down on ourselves in the early innings, but we didn’t have a reason to be because we were playing fairly well. I’m not crediting myself, but that inning we
started getting back up because we knew we could take care of it.”
Haltom needed 105 pitches to work all seven innings in the circle. She twirled a four-hitter, struck out six, walked three and was charged with two earned runs.
Tristan Bridges took the loss, allowing three runs on five hits. She needed 96 pitches in six innings, fanned four, walked four and hit a pair of batters—both with the bases loaded.
A one-out walk in the top of the first led to the initial run for the Bobcats. The next batter’s grounder to second looked like a possible double play, but the tag missed Ashley Landry, who was safe at second on the fielder’s choice.
Morgan Sebastian’s linedrive single to left plated Landry ahead of the throw for the score. Haltom got her second strikeout of the inning to end the frame.
Kaycee Koiner banged a stand-up double off the wall in left field to start Krum’s half of the second inning. She stole third and scored on a sacrifice fly to right, making it 2-0.
Faith Lipham led off Pleasant Grove’s half of the second with a single to center, and Khadijah Oritola worked a walk to put two on with no outs. Bridges got a lazy fly to left, strikeout and groundout to get out of the jam.
The Hawks stranded a pair of Krum runners on in the top of the third inning to keep their deficit at 2-0, which changed in the bottom of the frame.
Kyle worked a full-count walk, and Ashby put an infield single just over the pitcher’s head. Kimmie Atienza also had an infield hit in the hole on the left side to load the bases with no outs.
Lipham was hit by the pitch of her at-bat to drive in Pleasant Grove’s first run, and Oritola picked up the tying RBI when she was hit by a pitch next at-bat.
In the top of the fifth inning, a throwing error allowed the leadoff batter to reach for Krum, but the runner attempted to break for second before coming back to first. Kyle tagged her out before she reached the base safely.
The Bobcats went down in order in the sixth, and Haltom retired the first two in the seventh before a soft liner fell in short right field for the first hit since the third inning. The next pitch was popped up to Kyle to end the series, and the Hawks’ celebration began.
“This has been a heckuva ride, and it’s started in practice
in the because we work 100 percent every day,” Lipham said. “If we mess up, we try to make it up, and try to fix it because those are the things that will be important in a game.
“We keep each other up and play with 100 percent heart because heart is where it’s at; when we’re down we have to come back up with everything we have left.”
Lipham also led off the fifth with an infield single, sliding head first into the bag to beat a throw from the shortstop after the third baseman had slowed the hard-hit ball’s momentum. She was 2 for 2 with an RBI in the game, the only multiple-hit player for either team.
“What’s so great about this team is that there are so many people you can rely on to step up on to make plays,” Worley said. “There’s not a whole lot of credit given to the entire lineup by outside sources. But everyone of our girls has come through for us, and to know that any of those girls can do something special for you when they step up to the plate is a good feeling. I’m so proud of these girls and their resiliency.”