For the Mount Vernon Lady Mountaineers, the third time was truly the charm.
After falling to softball powerhouse Strafford by scores of 8-1 and 3-2 earlier this spring, Mount Vernon (21-7) found the magic formula to finally take down the previously undefeated Lady Indians (20-1) on Wednesday.
And it did so on a much larger stage by taking home the Class 1, District 9 championship in the process – the club's second crown in three years.
“They're an extremely talented group and it's a very special group,” Mount Vernon head coach Matt Schubert said about his team. “These seniors are the ones we started the program with and we've been at it for four years. I just can't say enough about them.”
In the 13-9 victory, the Lady Mountaineers collected an astounding 16 hits off star sophomore hurler Zoey Mullings, with four of those hits credited to sophomore shortstop Alane Cordray – good for a game-high.
Although she didn't tally an RBI in the win, Cordray scored four runs and reach base safely in all five of her plate appearances.
“I was feeling good today,” Cordray said. “I was really confident in myself and I was just ready to play and ready to hit the ball.”
Cordray and her determined Lady Mountaineers were ready to roll right from the start – lighting up Mullings for four runs in the first inning and three more in the second to boast a 7-1 lead after two and a half frames.
“That definitely got our momentum going,” Cordray added. “We knew going in that it would be a tough game, but we were all prepared from the beginning. Getting those four runs in the first inning really helped us get our momentum going and kept our intensity up through the whole game.”
After Strafford managed to get a pair of runs back in the bottom of the third, Mount Vernon scratched runs of its own across in each of the next three innings to eventually bust out to a convincing 13-3 advantage after a Maddi Brown RBI on a fielder's choice put the Lady Mountaineers up by ten in the sixth.
“They just kept tacking on and tacking on,” Strafford head coach Dale Bean said. “That's what really kind of got us. When they just kept tacking on a few here and a few there and we couldn't get a shut-down inning, that's eventually what got us.”
Strafford, playing on its home field and staring the end of its season square in the face, refused to go quietly into the night. Despite being down to their final six outs, the Lady Indians rallied for six runs in the sixth inning – sending eleven batters to the plate and giving the home crowd a glimmer of hope.
“We just knew that they would give us a big push at some point and we just had to be able to weather the storm if we were in that situation,” Schubert said of Strafford. “They did exactly what we thought they would do.”
In the seventh, Strafford managed to get two runners on base with only one out and was just one baserunner away from sending the potential tying run to the plate.
“I was in the outfield and I felt like I was going to puke,” Mount Vernon center fielder Whitney Wiehe said. “I was extremely nervous. If we didn't stick it together like we did in the end, they probably would have came back and got us, but we stuck together as a team.”
Starting pitcher Maddi Brown buckled down – getting a popout and groundout from Brooke Bishop and Rilie Vote, respectively, to end the Strafford threat and start the celebration for a Lady Mountaineers club that was able to nab timely runs against one of the area's most effective pitchers.
“Seeing that pitcher three times now makes a big difference,” Schubert added in reference to Mullings. “We know what she's going to throw, we know some of the different things that she was going to do, and it came down to just making plays.”
The road doesn't get much easier for Mount Vernon as it gets ready to take on the Purdy Lady Eagles (25-2), who have two wins in three tries over Schubert's team this season. The two teams will square off in the sectional round on Monday.
