By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
Cassville’s softball team was literally down to its last strike against an upset-minded Doniphan team on Monday evening in Aurora.
Wildcat freshman Tomi Blankenship stood at the plate with a full count, two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh with second seed Cassville trailing the fourth seed Donettes 6-5.
Blankenship took ball four to tie the game – and sophomore Navaeh Johnson followed with a single up the middle to give Cassville a 7-6 walk-off win in the Class 3 District 6 championship game.
“My little right fielder, she doesn’t get to bat much and when she does bat she does a lot of bunting,” Cassville coach Lori Videmschek said. “I looked at her and said get you a pitch to hit. Take the first one and get you a pitch to hit. She did what I asked her to do. Head down, drove it through the middle. Humongous hit. It was big for us, huge.
“The kids kept fighting. They never quit. They can say they never quit the whole time.”
Cassville, 16-14, advances to Saturday’s quarterfinal round against the District 5 winner, which will be decided Tuesday night.
The Wildcats looked like they might cruise to an easy win early on Monday evening. Cassville scored three runs in the bottom of the first; Kalee Lowe and Aubrey Stoufer each doubled to score runs and Lauren Sparkman grounded out to drive in another.
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Joei Blankenship reached on an error in the second and pinch runner Tomi Blankenship scored on a single by Kyler Hayward to make it 4-0.
Pitcher Aubrey Stoufer was in complete control, too. She had seven strikeouts through four innings and didn’t allow a base hit until the fifth, but that proved to be a big inning for the Donettes.
Doniphan loaded the bases with no outs and went on to score four runs on two wild pitches, a hit batter and a walk.
Stoufer helped her cause with a solo home run to center in the bottom half of the inning to make it 5-4, but the Donettes took a 6-5 lead in the sixth with a double to center and a single through the right side scoring two.
It remained 6-5 going into the bottom of the seventh.
Kalee Lowe, Stoufer and Lauren Sparkman drew three straight walks with one out to load the bases, but Doniphan got a strikeout to pull within one out of a win.
That brought Tomi Blankenship to the plate, and she drew the full-count walk to tie it up and set the stage for Johnson’s game winner.
“We never quit playing,” Videmschek said. “That was the whole key for us. We never quit playing.”
“I told them we need to get up there and see maybe a strike before we start swinging the bat and that was a key for us. I thought maybe we could get to their pitcher like they got to ours a little bit in that key situation. Big at bat for Kalee, she got on at first and they walked Aubrey. That was huge so we had runners at first and second. And then Lauren’s great at bat and here we are bases loaded with one out. I knew if we could just put the ball in play we had a chance to score and I just told them keep working, look at the zone, take a pitch if you have to. Get your timing on her.”
Cassville, which finished as the district runner up the last two years, sat at 4-12 less than a month ago after a 5-1 loss at Hartville. Videmschek said the team had a talk in the outfield after that game about playing to win instead of not to lose.
“After that meeting we turned things around,” she said. “Aubrey started pitching better, we started hitting better. Things sort of just took place and I think after that we won 11 of our 13 games.
“You want to have that winning mentality,” she said.
Monday’s win was the ninth in a row for the Wildcats.
