By Matt Turer — mturer@ky3.com
@MattTurer
Lincoln, Mo. — Sloan Swearngin is showing no signs of slowing down heading into the Final Four.
The hard-throwing Lincoln senior overcame a bit of a shaky start to strike out a season-high 14 batters in a 10-2 victory over Kingsville Saturday afternoon that sent the Lady Cardinals to state for the first time in program history.
“We’ve spent the last four years trying to get to this point. It’s really incredible. I can’t even describe it,” Swearngin said. “We played in two district championships. We lost my freshman year and my sophomore year and we didn’t even make it my junior year and now we’re here and it’s just amazing.”
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With spring softball in its fourth year of competing for a MSHSAA sanctioned state championship, Lincoln’s senior-heavy roster has had nothing but this opportunity on their minds since stepping on the field as freshmen.
“We set that goal four years ago that we would make it to the Final Four,” Lincoln head coach Staci Siercks said. “So now four years later it’s awesome that they’ve been able to accomplish that.”
Swearngin’s 14 strikeouts were a season-high. Impressive for a pitcher who had 160 strikeouts in just 83 innings pitched coming into Saturday. Kingsville managed to raise Swearngin’s ERA to 0.50 with a run coming home in the first and sixth innings.
“The first three innings she honestly struggled as much as she’s struggled,” Siercks said. “She had a hard time finding it and I would say some of it was that they were better and more aggressive hitters than we’ve seen, and just the big game. She was a little nervous. But then she settled in halfway through the game and threw well the rest of the game.”
Lincoln (21-0) used a five-run fifth inning to pull away from Kingsville (10-3). That rally was sparked by a pair of singles from Paige Bybee and Haley Mackey. Bybee was driven home on an Aleah Paxton single and Mackey scored on a Shelby Vandaveer double. Paxton, Vandaveer and Syd Johnson would all reach base and score in the fifth.
Kingsville doubled and singled off Swearngin to build a 1-0 lead after the top half of the first. Lincoln quickly responded with a pair of runs in the bottom half when Genesis Smith was driven home on a Bybee triple. Bybee scored on a Swearngin groundout.
Smith put Lincoln up 4-1 with an error-assisted inside-the-park home run with two outs in the second inning, a play that seemed to allow Lincoln to calm some early jitters.
“It makes your game easier the more you can score,” Siercks said. “You score early, it makes your defense better. It makes your hitting looser. Scoring that just calmed everybody down and gave them confidence to settle in and hit.”
Lincoln will face Purdy (26-1) in the state semifinals at 7 p.m. on May 19.
“There’s so much hype with going to the Final Four,” Siercks said. “Our baseball team went to the Final Four last year and our football team went to the Final Four this fall, so our girls have gotten to see that and experience it through the boys. They’ve had that so much on their minds and we’ve really talked about how we have to take care of today before we can even think about that. Now we’ve got to get busy.”
