The Hiram Terriers softball team’s attempt to three-peat as the North Coast Athletic Conference tournament champions came up short when they lost 10-8 against DePauw in the championship match last Sunday at Greencastle, IN.
“It was a tough bus ride back for sure,” noted Coach Shannon Schaub. “We won the first two games out there and were the top seed going into that championship day and unfortunately, we could not execute. We just gave up too many runs and could not stop them.”
Entering the double-elimination NCAC tournament as the third seed, the Terriers (25-17, 10-4) advanced to the championship round last Thursday when they blanked conference foe Dennison 3-0 in the first game and triumphed over the Tigers 3-1 in the second one.
Hiram was just one game away from becoming the NCAC tournament champions for the third straight year and earning a bid into the NCAA Division III softball tournament. After losing to the Terriers on Thursday, DePauw staved off elimination to face Hiram again on Friday and returned the favor, winning 12-5, to force a decisive fourth game.
The final game had the makings of another high-scoring affair when the teams combined for five runs in the first inning.
Trailing 3-2 in the bottom half of the second inning, Hiram tied the score at 3-3 when senior left fielder Larissa Baeza scored from third base when senior first baseman Angel Santellan fouled out to right field and senior Kyle Perez delivered the big hit, crushing a three-run home run to center field, pushing the Terriers ahead 6-3.
“You always want that momentum and we definitely had it,” noted the first-year coach. “I feel like we came off really strong offensively and so you were feeling really good about it but we knew it would be a matter of time and we knew that DePauw would score.”
The Tigers responded with five runs in the top of the third beginning with a RBI-double by senior catcher Kelsey Bernhard, trimming Hiram’s lead to 6-43. The Terriers opened the door for a big DePauw inning when with runners on second and third base, Perez committed a throwing error on a ground ball off the bat of junior shortsop Alyssa Anderson, allowing an additional run to score, tying the game at 6-6.
Junior second baseman Riley Heim gave DePauw the lead with a RBI-double to left field and sophomore right fielder Ella Kuenster hit an infield RBI-single to short, pushing the Tigers’s lead to 8-6.
According to Schaub, the Terriers had been a good defensive team throughout the season, recording a fielding percentage of .960, but against DePauw last week, it committed several errors in each of the championship games and that proved costly.
“DePauw threw a small-game mentality at us with bunting and slapping and that hurt us a little bit and even when we played DePauw at our place during the regular season, we saw that same thing and those were the times our defense was falling apart,” she ackowledged.
The Tigers added two more runs in the top of the fourth inning, pushing their advantage to 10-6. Although Hiram responded with runs in the bottom half of the fourth and sixth frames, it stranded seven runners on base, which was an all-too familiar trend it had experienced during the season.
“That has been the story of the whole season,” noted Schaub,. “We have left so many people on base and we just wanted that big hit and we had the big hit sometimes and at the end of Sunday we just left too many people on base.”
Junior pitcher Darian Kanno and senior hurler Trinity Meza, who each delivered stellar outings on Thursday, struggled to put away DePauw batters, combining to allow 10 runs (eight earned) on 13 hits, two walks and striking out only two batters in the first four innings.
Freshman pitcher Hope Sizemore kept the Terriers within striking distance by coming in to hurl three innings of scoreless relief, surrendering one hit, walking two batters and fanning one.
“Hope had not probably not pitched in over a month and I knew we needed to do something to try and stop them and give our offense a chance and Hope came in and gave us three scoreless innings,” said Schaub.”
The Terriers will graduate five seniors from this year’s squad, but Schaub said that the returnees will use the final game against DePauw as motivation for next year to not fall short.
“We talked to all of the returnees after we talked to the seniors on Sunday and we just made them take this moment right now to use this as motivation,” she said.
