By Pat Dailey (For OzarkSportsZone.com)
CLEVER — Kylie Wenger’s timing to pitch the best game of her life Wednesday couldn’t have been better.
“Oh yeah, I’d say so,” Wenger said as she smiled and glanced at the scoreboard showing second-seeded Clever winning the Class 2 District 5 championship game 2-0 against top-seeded Sparta.
Wenger went the distance for a three-hit shutout. All of Sparta’s hits were singles. Wenger faced only three betters over the minimum, while striking out six and walking one.
“I honestly have never seen her pitch that well,” shortstop Kenna Wise said.
“Kylie was on fire,” second baseman Ryley King said. “She was really on.”
Wenger’s location on her pitches also couldn’t have been better. She threw a first-pitch strike to 18 of the 24 batters she faced.
“I hit pretty much everywhere I wanted to,” Wenger said. “I wasn’t missing.”
Clever coach Chery Grant felt Wenger also kept Sparta’s hitters off balance just enough by mixing the speeds on her pitches ever so slightly.
“Throwing straight fast balls doesn’t get the job done. So, we’ve been working on changing speeds, taking a little off and hitting spots,” Grant said.
Back in March, Sparta (22-3) pounded out 10 hits, including four doubles, off of Wenger in a 7-5 victory against Clever.
This time around, Wenger handled the pressure of pitching with only a 1-0 lead through five innings and coped the best she could with the 90-degree heat.
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“That was three long days back to back to back for Kylie to pitch in the heat. Tough kid,” Grant said.
Wise gave Wenger the only run she would need in the first inning. Wise led off the game with a bunt single, stole second base, stole third base and scored on a safety-squeeze bunt by Savannah Ketcherside.
In the seventh, Wise tripled and scored on a groundout to first base.
“Kenna’s speed makes a huge difference,” Grant said. “We utilized her speed.”
Wise’s two hits and a single by Sydney Thrasher were the Lady Jays’ only hits off Sparta pitcher Natalie Wilks.
Wilks fanned seven and walked one.
Clever’s District title run seemingly came out of nowhere. The Lady Jays (16-10) entered Districts having lost three of five games, in addition to losing four games to rainouts.
Just last week, Clever was routed by Forsyth 11-1.
“Going into this tournament, we were kind of down knowing we had lost before to Sparta and we had just lost to Forsyth,” Wenger said. “We didn’t have a whole bunch of confidence coming in. Also, for a lot of us, at the beginning of the season we had to overcome going for stats for ourselves. We didn’t want to work as a team until the very end of the season. Tonight, we worked together as a team. That’s what got us this win.”
“We picked the right time to jell as a team,” Grant said.
For Clever the District championship is the program’s first postseason title since 2016, when the Lady Jays won the Class 1 District 8 title and reached the Class 1 Quarterfinal round.
This was actually Clever’s first taste of the postseason since 2019. In addition to the COVID outbreak wiping out the spring sports season in 2020, the Lady Jays were forced to forfeit their first-round game at Districts last year due to COVID quarantine efforts at the school.
“This win with my fellow seniors who I’ve played with since the third grade makes up for every season we lost,” Wise said.
