SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Herbert Hoover had suffered a hard-fought one-run loss in 10 innings to Winfield mere minutes earlier.
The Class AAA No. 3 Huskies had to immediately turn around and face No. 4 Point Pleasant, a team that had defeated Hoover in both regular season meetings.
“You don’t want to lose, but they understood the assignment and that if we lost, we’d have to turn and burn,” Huskies’ coach Missy Smith said.
That was certainly the case in the elimination matchup, with the Huskies defeating the Black Knights 9-1 over five innings at The Rock Field B at Little Creek Park.
The result prolongs the season for Herbert Hoover (26-9) at least one more game, while PPHS finishes its campaign 26-10.
“It’s hard if you’ve had a great season to come down here and have it end this way,” Point Pleasant coach Lewie Wickline said. “There’s some tough plays we needed to make and didn’t come up with that we’ve been making all year. I encourage them to take chances. Today, just like yesterday, we didn’t play very well. It’s tough as a senior knowing you could be playing your last game. We were a little tight yesterday and today.”
Having two pitchers to rely on is a luxury the Huskies made the most of and Jocelyn Schafer kept the Black Knights off the scoreboard in the top of the first.
When she returned to the circle in the second, Schafer had benefitted from an early the Huskies’ offense provided via three singles and a Campbell Lunsford sacrifice fly.
Emma Hanson led off the second with a double to spark what would become a three-run frame for Hoover. Jaylee Carper’s single brought Hanson in to make it 2-0, while Bella Haas added a sacrifice fly and Ayva Veltri a run-scoring single to shortstop that left Point Pleasant facing a 4-0 deficit.
The Black Knights had an opportunity to make it a tight game in the top of the fourth after accounting for three consecutive one-out singles to load the bases.
But what looked appeared to be on the verge of a run-scoring single at the worst off the bat of Rylan MacKnight instead turned into a fielder’s choice with an out at the plate.
“That was big. There was a ball with a little English and usually that ball that hits right field goes the other way, but instead it bounced right back to her,” Wickline said. “They had a lot of bad luck last game and got some good luck right there. We could’ve maybe got something going there and kept the game close. We’d beaten them twice and we might have been a little too confident, but what matters is not what happens during the season, it’s during the tournament.”
Callie Hall then lifted a fly ball to right for the final out of the inning.
The Huskies capitalized on an error to score their fifth run in the fourth, and they’d add two more that inning on a Taylor Jones double.
Josie Shobe’s double in the fifth brought in the Black Knights’ first run, but the Huskies produced four straight two-out singles in the bottom of that inning, including one from Vaas and another from Veltri that both brought in a run to end the matchup early.
“We had a chance to put them away when we were up seven and then we gave up a run, and I told them we could put them away and let’s go get two,” Smith said. “But to Point’s credit, they got the first two batters out and then we strung some hits together and we were fortunate enough to take advantage of mistakes that we could end it.”
By finishing off the victory in five innings, the Huskies were able to save Schafer and/or Kaylyn Harper from having to throw an additional two innings after the marathon matchup with Winfield earlier in the day.
“They couldn’t get out on us. We got out on them and once we got out on them, we kind of kept the pedal down,” Smith said. “We’d played 10 innings, and then we were trying to save all the innings we can, because we do have another game tonight, so getting that short game was big.”
The Huskies totaled 14 hits. Kyleigh Elmore was 4-for-4 and Jones and Veltri had three hits apiece.
Over five frames, Schafer scattered six hits, issued one walk and struck out a pair.
Shobe had two hits to lead Point, while MacKnight walked one and struck out one over 4.2 innings.