By Michael Cignoli (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
SPRINGFIELD — Despite leading Purdy in hits, home runs, batting average and RBIs, it can be relatively easy for an opposing team to neutralize Lauren Schallert in the batter’s box.
Just don’t pitch to her.
At least that was the strategy Advance employed against Schallert in the Class 1 softball semifinals, intentionally walking the senior three of the four times she came to the plate.
Unfortunately for the Hornets, Schallert is even more dominant in the circle. And while her bat may be reduced to non-factor at this point in the season, her arm isn’t as easy to avoid.
Schallert pitched another complete-game shutout, striking out 16 and allowing just two hits, as Purdy advanced to the Class 1 championship game with a 7-0 victory over Advance on Saturday at the Killian Softball Complex. The District 5 champions will play for the first softball title in school history at noon tomorrow against Holcomb, the winners of District 1.
To secure the title, the Eagles will lean heavily on Schallert — an all-state selection as a sophomore who has developed into a human buzz saw during her stellar senior season.
She improved to 24-1 on the season (the Eagles are 29-1) and has now struck out 276 batters in 137.1 innings, numbers that could be even higher had Purdy’s offense not forced games to end early due to the run rule. The Eagles have outscored their opponents 312-33, with about half of those runs allowed coming against East Newton in their only loss of 2021.
“We have so much confidence behind her right now — and we have all season,” Purdy coach Lori Videmschek said. “That is a good thing for us. These kids have been playing with her for a long time and her work ethic and what she does is really awesome.”
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Schallert struck out all six Hornets she faced when this game started Thursday, before heavy rain arrived in the third inning and suspended play until Friday and then Saturday when the rain did not subside. The game finally resumed at 2 p.m., some 46 hours after the pause.
Though the rain finally let up, Schallert did not.
She took a no-hitter into the fifth inning before Natalee Roper broke it up with a leadoff single, but didn’t allow another baserunner until there were two outs in the seventh inning.
The closest Advance came to a run was after a walk and fielder’s choice gave the Hornets runners on the corners with two outs in the third, but Schallert ended the threat with a strikeout.
“We were doing really good in the first three innings when we first started and when we got pushed back, it was no big deal,” Schallert said. “We just came in today thinking it was a brand new game and just picked up where we left off.”
That was also true of Purdy’s offense.
The Eagles led 1-0 when the rain arrived after Advance intentionally walked Schallert — a .625 hitter with 10 home runs and 45 runs batted in through districts — with two outs in the first. Bayleigh Robbins followed with an RBI double, scoring courtesy runner Rylee Stanford.
They doubled the lead on a virtually identical sequence in the fifth, as Advance signaled its intention to intentionally walk Schallert as soon as she stepped out of the on-deck circle. This time, Robbins tripled to the gap in left-center to bring Stanford home.
Robyn Schad followed with a RBI single and it was 3-0 Eagles midway through the fifth.
Schallert struck out five across the fifth and sixth innings to preserve the lead, then came to the plate with a runner on and no one out in the seventh. The Hornets threw to her initially, but opted to intentionally walk the senior for a third time after falling behind in the count.
Advance starter Annabelle Duffield retired two hitters without incident, but Jessi Hoppes (single) and Annabelle Bowman (double) added two-out, two-RBI hits to make it 7-0 Purdy.
“We started hitting strikes,” Videmschek said. “That was key for us. We were a little tight the first couple innings there. Once we relaxed and started hitting strikes then we were OK.”
As Schallert recorded the final out on Saturday — on a strikeout, of course — teammates mobbed her in the circle to celebrate the school’s first trip to the state title game since 2017.
“It’s amazing,” Schallert said. “My heart was pumping. I was so excited. My team was excited. We’ve been working every single day in practice — and every single game. We’ve been working toward this. Now that we’re finally here, it’s just unbelievable.”
She and outfielder Kinsley Mattingly were in eighth grade in 2017 and managed the team, which lost to Strafford. Now, as seniors, they have a chance to do what that team could not.
“We’ve talked about it from last year until now,” Videmschek said. “It was one of our goals to get here and to win that first one and to get to that championship game and leave it all on the field. We’ve talked about this as a thing for our town and our fans and everybody. They’ve just worked extremely hard to get to this point.”
All that remains in Purdy’s way is Holcomb, a 3-2 winner over Wellington-Napoleon in the other semifinal on Saturday. The team from the Bootheel, also nicknamed the Hornets, enters with a 25-4 record and has scored 17 or more runs in 11 of those victories.
Holcomb boasts a top-to-bottom lineup with seven players who have batted in 30 or more runs and six players who were batting above .500 at the end of the District 1 tournament.
It is the ultimate test for Schallert, who has been the ultimate test for opposing lineups.
“I just throw the ball,” she said. “My coach calls the pitches for me. I just trust that she calls the right pitch. I just throw the ball and I let my defense work behind me. They did an amazing job today catching the pop-ups and getting the ground outs for me.”
A win would not only give Purdy the first softball championship in school history, but just the school’s third in any sport. Its girls basketball team won state titles in 1981 and 2011.
“As I tell these kids, very few kids get a chance to play in a Final Four,” Videmschek said. “To get to play for the championship is awesome. I just want them to live it up, you know? Just have fun with it. You never know when we’re going to get a chance to do this ever again, especially these seniors.”
