Friday was a special day for the Mt. Vernon community, and Saturday may be even better.
Its high school softball team, which has only existed for four seasons, shut out Malden 4-0 at Killian Stadium in Springfield for a semifinal win and a ticket to its first-ever state championship game.
And at 1 p.m. Saturday, the girls will play Crest Ridge (21-1), who made it to the Class 1 Final Four last season, for a chance to go down in history as the state champions.
Mt. Vernon (23-7) head coach Matt Schubert said, “We’re not just here to play; we’re here to win it. Our girls absolutely believe that and they have since the beginning of the year. We’ve had a few rough patches here and there, but we’ve never gotten too low.”
With the same mentality as her coach, junior Morgan Hull said, “The first trip to state we made, which was two years ago, we came with the mentality that it was just good to be here. This year I really think we’ve got the mentality that we’re here to win. We’re here to play. We’re going to play our hearts out and leave it all on the field.”
Even an illness can’t stop the Lady Mountaineers from doing just that.
Winning pitcher Maddison Brown, who pitched all seven innings, struck out five and allowed only four hits to contribute immensely to the Lady Mountaineers special victory, was struck with sickness recently.
“She actually missed practice on Wednesday and was pretty limited yesterday,” said Schubert. “She wasn’t quite as sharp as she’s been, and she battled, battled and battled. I mean, she pitched a great game. Shut out. Can’t ask for much better in a semifinal game.”
Schubert said of his team overall, “Today I don’t think we were real, real sharp, but the girls battled and were able to pull it out.”
Ultimately, the girls were just sharp enough to execute and get the job done.
The girls first got on the scoreboard in the second inning, triggered by Callie Christiansen’s base hit.
This gave Destiny Krempges the opportunity to advance from second, but she found herself in a pickle.
But Malden’s second baseman failed to catch the back-and-forth ball, and taking advantage of the error, Krempges was quick to slide to third.
Krempges soon scored a run on McKenna Hagerman’s RBI single, closing out the second inning excitement 1-0.
The bottom of the fifth gave Mt. Vernon a bit of a comfortable lead.
Brown scored on Kaitlyn Foulk’s RBI double and Alane Cordray on Hull’s sacrifice hit to make it 3-0.
A sacrifice bunt came from Hagerman in the sixth inning, allowing Christiansen to score a run and make the final score 4-0.
Schubert said, “They take pride on doing all the little things. They’ve worked really hard on bunting, taking the extra base when we can and just being able to execute…”
Hull said, “There were a few errors here and there. Our hitting was a little off, but we’ll come back tomorrow better than ever and ready to play ball.”
Box Score
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | R | H | E | |
| Mt. Vernon | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | X | 4 | 7 | 1 |
| Malden | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 5 |
