Girls take second in Division IV softball

For the second time in four seasons, the Huron softball program has advanced to a team to Battle Creek to play for a state championship, to only come up short in the final game of the season. On the strength of a sixth inning three-run homer from junior Ashley Fleming, Rogers City defeated Vandercook Lake (33-4) 3-2 Friday in the state seminfinal game and earned a spot in the Division IV state title contest Saturday.

The Hurons (31-10) would take on the D-IV defending state champs, Waterford Our Lady of the Lakes (27-10), which had won five Class D/D-IV titles since 1992 and seven overall. The Rogers City squad, which had been dubbed the ?Cardiac Kids? with their late inning heroics and extra inning marathons through their seven-game tournament run, met their match and had to settle for the state runner-up trophy with a 12-0 loss. The Hurons lost in the Division III state title game in 2001, 6-2, to Niles Brandywine.

?WE MADE it to today?s championship game, (but) we just ran into a better team today,? said second-year coach Karl Grambau. ?We had a great season. It was a tough road here. We had a lot of extra inning games. The Cardiac Kids came through many times when we had our backs to the wall.? Our Lady of the Lakes (OLL) turned up the pressure early, putting the bat on the ball and forcing the Huron defense to make plays. Only two of the 21 Laker outs were from strikeouts. Along with collecting 10 hits off starter Ashley Fleming, OLL had extra base runners from five errors and eight walks, which was uncharacteristic of Rogers City this post-season.

The Lakers scored two in the first inning, a lone run in the second, and broke the game open in the fourth with three more runs. ?Ashley had a great year pitching the ball,? said Grambau. ?She has had a great year. We haven?t had too many days where we?ve played back-to-back days. Usually the day after a game, she is resting a little bit in practice. She?s still a warrior.?

AFTER THE title game, fighting back tears, Fleming said she didn?t pitch the greatest game. ?I just didn?t have my power today. They did have good hitters. Hopefully, we?ll come back to state and play them again,? said Fleming, who faced 44 batters. Her counterpart, OLL?s Paige Pettit, who led the Lakers on the mound during their 2003 championship run, limited the Rogers City attack to five hits. She struck out 11 and allowed only one walk. OLL committed no errors.

Rogers City?s best threat was in the first inning when Cassy Brege singled to center field and Fleming walked. The runners advanced to second and third when Jess Konieczny grounded to first. The threat ended with a strikeout of CJ Calabrese. Pettit would set down the next four batters in a row to keep the Rogers City batters in check and the Hurons never got another runner past second base. The number two and three batters in the lineup for OLL combined for seven of the 10 hits. Senior first baseman Amber Breault was four-for-five. ?(OLL) plays a very tough schedule, as we do as well,? said Grambau. ?They play a lot of A and B schools, we do too. I think we are both battle-tested in the tournament, but Waterford Our Lady of the Lakes has a great softball tradition. ?They put a lot of pressure on you on the basepaths. They were very patient at the plate. They had some very good hitters in their lineup and they played good defense. It was their day today.?

IN THE SEMFINAL game against Vandercook, the fans were getting nervous, with the girls down 2-0 in the sixth inning. Vandercook starter Jenny McDaniels (28-2 record) had struck out 10 and was in command. The Jayhawks picked up single runs in the second and fourth innings, and the way McDaniels was pitching, it looked like it would be enough. She struck out the first three batters of the game and set down for the first 10 in a row before Brege ended the streak with one of her two singles. Brege was left at second and

there were no more hits until the sixth. With one out, Laura Konieczny and Brege singled through the left side on back-to-back at bats. The next batter was Fleming, who drilled a 2-2 pitch over the left field fence for a three-run homer. The Vandercook coach said it was a pitch McDaniels wishes she could have back. The pitch was grooved right down the middle and Fleming made no mistake with the swing.

Vandercook could only muster one more base runner in the final two innings. ?We did really well as a team,? said Brege. ?I?ll remember it all. The girls were great. We worked for it, we kept them on their toes.?

Grambau loses four seniors: Brege, Heather LaLonde, Megan Marx, and Katie Krueger but brings back nine juniors, six who started, and three freshmen. ?We are going to keep working hard and keep the tradition of Rogers City softball going,? said Grambau.