Just a bad day to have a bad day

By Mark Carpenter

People’s Defender

No one expected the Peebles Lady Indians softball squad to still be in action on a cold and blustery May 29, especially not playing in the Division IV regional finals, with an opportunity to advance to their second consecutive Final Four. In 2019, the Peebles girls made it to Akrona nd dropped a heartbreaking 1-0 decision to Antwerp in the state semi-finals and this past Saturday, they traveled back to Pickerington Central High School to match up with the Newark Catholic Green Weave. with one of the four coveted state tournament berths on the line.

After stumbling through the end of the regular season, the Lady Indians had turned their fortunes around and played some of their best softball of the spring, making it back to the Elite Eight with four consecutive postseason wins. But sports can be cruel at times and Saturday just turned out to be a bad day for the Tribe. Leading 2-1 after three and a half innings, the bottom of the fourth tuned out to be a disaster for the Lady Indians, as Newark Catholic took advantage of a flurry of uncharacteristic Peebles errors to score six times, and the Lady Indians never recovered. The Green Wave continued to pour it on, eventually punching their ticket to the Final Four with a 12-2 win in six innings.

“The way we started out it seemed we just weren’t ready to go today,” said Peebles head coach Doug McFarland after the loss. “We just didn’t make the routine plays that we usually do, something we haven’t done the last couple of games. I though we were a little sluggish at the plate and I didn’t expect that today honestly. I thought their pitcher would be really hittable and it just baffles me why we struggled at the plate. I know it was cold but we’ve pplayed in cold weather before.”

“This team battled all season, we beat the top three seeds in this tournament to get here today, the top three teams in the SOC. We beat an undefeated and ranked in the state team in Notre Dame, we ame out an played well in the tournament but our bad game hit us at a bad time.”

In Saturday’s Elite Eight battle, the Green Wave dented the scoreboard first, getting a single run in the bottom of the second on a run-scoring base hit by #9 hitter Ava Heffley. The Lady Indians came right back to score two times in the top of the third against the southpaw deliveries of Newark Catholic starter Maddie Brothers. The Peebles girls are extremely well-coached and normally fundamentally sound, experts at playing small ball, and that is how they got their only runs on Saturday. Lily McFarland led off the top of the third getting hit by a pitch and was sacrificed to second on a Caydence Carroll bunt.

Marisa Moore reached on an error and Baylie Johnston followed with another nice bunt, this one thrown away at first base. McFarland scored easily on the miscue and a hustling Moore came all the way around, sliding head first safely into home to give Peebles an early 2-1 advantage.

The Green Wave went down in order in the bottom of the third as did the Lady Indians in the top half of the fourth, setting up the fateful Newark Catholic half of the fourth. Everything that could go wrong for the Lady Indians in a span of three outs did, as they lost their composure and committed five errors in the frame, allowing the Green Wave a gift of six runs that totally turned around the momentum of the contest. When the dust had cleared, Newark Catholic had taken control of the game, now leading 7-2 after four.

The stunned Lady Indians just never got back their “mojo” and went down in order in the top of the fifth, the inning ending on a bizarre at-bat for Caydence Caroll that included an illegal pitch call on a third strike and then ended with a dropped third strike with Carroll reaching first base safely, only to be called out after a conference of the three umpires.

The bottom of the fifth was another big at-bat for the Green Waveas their fourth inning momentum carried over and they again capitalized on some mental errors in the field by the Lady Indians. The Newark Catholic squad is a very aggressive group on the base paths, forcing the hand of their opponent’s defense, and they forced the Peebles hand into four more runs and a commanding 11-2 advantage after five.

The Lady Indians only mustered one hit the entire game and perhaps fittingly that came off the bat of their only senior, first baseman Kyndell Lloyd, who grounded a single to left with two outs in the top of the sixth but was left stranded when Emmi Nichols went down swinging. That left the Green Wave just one run short of a run rule win as they came to bat in the bottom of the sixth and they took care of that detail on just five pitches from Peebles starter Lanie Johnston. Brooklyn Stanley led off the inning with a booming double to the center field fence, followed by DH Madison Sheppard dropping a base hit deep down the right field line, with Stanley crossing the plate with the clinching score, sending the Green Wave into a celebration of a trip to Akron next week for the Division IV state tourney.

Even with the disappointing end to their season, the Lady Indians definitely have nothing to hang their heads about, again taking their fans on a magical tournament run to the Elite Eight and though the final record will show as 13-13. they will be a team to be reckoned with in 2022, losing just the one senior, Kyndell Lloyd.

“I can’t say enough about Kyndell,” said Coach McFarland. “She came out and battled hard through a knee injury she suffered when we were in Akron. She played with a brace for awhile and moved from catcher to first base, but she ditched the brace a couple of games ago and just played it out. I give her a lot of credit for stepping up and being a team leader, talking with the young girls and keeping them up.”

“We’re definitely looking forward to next year. We’ve got a lot of girls coming back and we should be proud of what we did this year and hopefully they will come out ready to go next year. We have as good an opportunity to get back her as anybody.”

BOX SCORE

Peebles

002 000— 2

Newark Catholic

010 641— 12

Peebles Hitting (AB-R-H-RBI): Moore 3-1-0-0, B. Johnston 3-0-0-0, Lloyd 3-0-1-0, Nichols 2-0-0-0, Storer 2-0-0-0, L, Johnston 2-0-0-0, Mills 2-0-0-0, McFarland 1-1-0-0, Carroll 1-0-0-0, Team 19-2-1-0.

N. Catholic Hitting (AB-R-H-RBI): Diaz 4-2-1-0, Boren 3-1-1-0, Banjoff 4-0-1-1, Gibson 4-0-0-0, Stanley 3-3-2-0, Sheppard 4-1-2-1, Knowlton 3-3-2-0, Nagel 3-2-3-1, Heffley 3-0-1-2, Team 31-12-13-5.

Extra-Base Hits: Boren 2B, Nagel 2B, Stanley 2B (2)

Peebles Pitching: L. Johnston (L) 5 IP, 13 H, 12 R, 6 ER, 2 BB, 4 K

N. Catholic Pitching: Brothers (W) 6 IP,1 H, 2 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 8 K