Young, fun and talented The Trojans’ softball future is super bright

Fairfield's varsity softball team has reached the Class 4A regional final each of the last seven seasons, unfortunately, FHS is on another two-game losing streak in this situation after losing at Newton last year and 3-0 at No. 3 ranked North Scott on Tuesday.

'Allison {Rebling} threw real well and that was the first thing that had to happen for us to have a chance,” said head coach Bob Bradfield of his teams' expectations going into the contest. '[Rebling] only gave up 3-4 hits and pitched well enough to win, but we had that messed up play in the first inning.”

The situation Bradfield is referring to is the Lancers scoring first in the home-half of the opening frame when junior utility-player Brooke Kilburg stole second base for North Scott and then crossed home after two errant throws by the Trojan defense.

Fairfield responded with two baserunners in their second at-bat with junior Destiny Gridley and freshman Jenna Norris both reaching before the home team avoided allowing any runs with a quick escape of the situation. The Lancers failed to respond in their subsequent opportunity and the first two innings were over by 7:18 p.m. and the score 1-0, North Scott.

What's going on?

Before the beginning of the third inning, Trojan skipper Bob Bradfield asked the umpires how they expected to handle a dead-ball situation if it occurred because of the large number of fans, mostly from North Scott, draped over the fences that surrounded the playing surface. There was also a warning to North Scott students to refrain from speaking to players on the field during action with the threat of ejection mentioned.

The conclusion

In the top of the fourth, Gridley twisted her hips and ripped a stitch towards left field, unfortunately, it was quickly gobbled up by the third baseman who doubled off the Trojan runner at first to end the minor rally. In the bottom of the inning, junior Shay Drish returned the favor by going deep into the left side hole between third and shortstop before throwing out the runner by a quarter-step with the outstreched Hannah Simpson reaching out and receiving the ball in time.

Top of the fifth was the best chance for FHS who trailed just 1-0 and loaded the bases with two outs after Danielle Breen slowly rolled a single up the middle before stealing second on a wild pitch during her twin-sister Delaney's at-bat. Although the latter Breen was unable to reach safely, Drish and Rebling drew walks with freshman Brynley Allison pinch-running for the junior ace.

With Hannah Simpson on-deck and two outs, eighth grader Coty Engle came to the plate and faced a new pitcher for North Scott, junior Drew Lewis.

Engle battled for pitch-after-pitch with two strikes and ran the count full before flying out to deep left field to end the rally.

Lancer senior Abby Moeller put the Trojans out of reach with a two-run shot that sent North Scott coach Holly Hoelting into an arguably inappropriate rampage around the sidelines, high-fiving fans along the fence while galloping around like Happy Gilmore.

'They got the big home run hit, but even the girl who also scored just had a little blooper right before that,” said Bradfield who never in 41 years has reacted like that. 'It was just one of those lucky things where they hit it where no one could get to it.”

Down three Bradfield knew it was do-or-die time for the Trojans season.

'We knew you obviously have to score runs to win and we had a couple chances and had runners on base during a number of innings.”

Jenna Norris continued her frustrating at-bats with another long-but-caught fly-ball to left field after FHS put runners on the base path again in the sixth.

Drish drew a walk in the seventh, but there would be no rally and the game ended with a foul pop-up secured by the Lancers in front of their dugout before the congregated at the pitchers circle to celebrate.

Game plan

'We haven't been a great hitting team all year so it's not like we haven't experienced this and early on we did almost everything the opposite of what we planned,” explained Bradfield. 'We said if she's throwing the first one right down the middle for a strike, we need to swing at it and we took a couple of those. Then, we'd swing at pitches out of the strike zone and it doesn't matter how good of a hitter you are, if you take a strike and swing at a ball, all of a sudden it's 0-2 and that's tough for any hitter to hit well against 0-2.”

Long at-bats

'It's not what we hope to be good at, but we have some hitters that just keep fouling off pitches with two strikes and work a bunch of walks. Peyton McCabe and Jenna Norris have done that quite a bit. They don't always get on base, but we did get a couple of those tonight.”

Losing your seniors

'When you look at our lineup card, six of the 10 that played are either eighth or ninth graders. Our emotional leaders all season were our two seniors and they spent the whole season trying to keep our players up and we're going to miss them and that part of their leadership and we need some leaders to step up next year.”

Next Trojan up

'All three of our returning juniors are not vocal leaders, let's put it that way with Destiny, Allison and Shay. Here's the thing, you can lead by the way you prepare and hustle and approach the game. They do that and if the rest of the team doesn't pay attention to that, than that's on us and the rest of the team. It helps if you have someone that can talk a little bit, but once the game starts, you need to focus on fundamentals and pay attention to the situations of the game.”

Expectations versus reality

'When we started the season, we had absoulutely no idea what it would bring with all of our young players, but we knew the two eighth graders were going to be good, even though they are still eighth graders. When you start six eighth and ninth graders and have your ace suffer a finger injury, we probably should have won a few more.”

Wait ‘til next year?

'It doesn't happen automatically just because you get all of your starters back,” clarified Bradfield. 'Not everyone automatically hits and pitches better. A lot of our girls will hit better when they just learn to swing at better pitches, it's not like their swing gets better. They just learn to understand that they can't hit pitches down low or up high, they aren't going to do anything good with it. That's something we can improve on. We really need to improve on is attacking hittable pitches.”

Recap

The Trojans finished the season 22-19 overall and won the Southeast Conference championship outright.