MC Softball season ended by Baldwin

By rscaife
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Updated: June 4, 2018

By BRIAN CARSON

UNIVERSITY PARK – Winning softball comes down to three components – pitching, timely hitting, and solid defense.

Unfortunately, to paraphrase the classic Meatloaf song, for the Mifflin County softball team, ‘Two Out of Three Was Bad’ in a 9-6 loss to Baldwin in the opening round of the PIAA Class 6A championships at Beard Field at the Nittany Lion Softball Park on Monday afternoon.

The District 6 champions left their defense at home – committing five errors that led to four unearned runs in the loss to the Highlanders, third-place finishers in District 7. Mifflin County ends its season at 17-6.

“That’s not typical of the way we play (defense). I don’t know if you can rack that up to nerves? You get all these people at this game and so forth. We have some young kids out there and we just didn’t play solid defense,” Husky coach Jack McCurdy said. “We made some nice plays but for the most part we were kicking the ball around. You’re going to get an error or two but you can’t have that many.”

Ten seniors – Maddie Amspacker, Ralie Goss, Selena Breneman, Eleana Eckley, Hanna Kanagy, Hannah Fitzgerald, Sabrina Stuck, Emily Bingman, Maxi Johnson, and Analisa Yoder – capped their high school careers with four appearances in the district finals, winning three championships.

“It has been a nice run. We’ve played in the District 6 championship every year for seven years and in this senior group there are several of them who have been with us for three and sometimes four years, with Kanagy being one of them,” McCurdy said. “In her time, she’s seen three district championships and an appearance in the quarterfinals of states. The expectations and the goals for this team were high. I really thought this team was capable of making a good run.”

After surrendering a run in the first, the Huskies took a short-lived 2-1 lead with two runs in the bottom of the second.

Kanagy doubled to right-center and Bingman had a knock to right driving home courtesy runner Cassidy Wilson. Goss doubled home Breneman, a courtesy runner for Bingman, for the lead.

Baldwin (13-5) answered with three runs in the third thanks to an RBI single to center by Cassie Carlson and a two-run base hit to right by Carly Santillo, who went 3-for-4 with two doubles and five RBIs. The four runs scored by the Highlanders in the first three innings were unearned due to Husky miscues in the field.

Mifflin County cut the deficit to 4-3 with a run in the third. Eckley reached on an infield single, advanced to second after a walk to Olivia Ahern, and plated on a single to right by Alyssa Schnell.

The Highlanders padded their lead with a run in the sixth and four back-breaking runs in the seventh. An Allison Murray RBI single scored Santillo in the sixth. Santillo’s three-run double and a sacrifice fly by winning pitcher Adeline Tagg accounted for all the runs in the seventh.

“You have to give some credit to that team. They have some good hitters. That one (the three-run double) kind of got away from us,” McCurdy said. “The ball shouldn’t have probably been where it was on the plate with that kid (Santillo) up there. They’re kids. They’re going to make some mistakes.”

The Huskies mustered some offense in the bottom of the seventh when Sydney Orwig singled, Eckley doubled off the left-field wall, and Ahern blasted a three-run homer to left, making it 9-6. Any hopes of a comeback ended on back-to-back groundouts.

“The seventh hurt bad. As a coaching staff we talked about that because we knew what we had in the bottom of the seventh inning,” McCurdy said. “Olivia (Ahern) is capable of putting three or four runs on the board if we get people on and she delivered. I thought if we could enter the seventh only two runs down this kid can do some damage with one swing. Unfortunately, in the top of the seventh, our defense wasn’t there. We gave them way too many runs.”

Eckley, Kanagy, and Goss each had two hits for the Huskies, while Carlson and Salena Janquay had two hits for Baldwin.

Kanagy suffered the loss for Mifflin County in her final appearance in a Husky uniform. The inaugural recipient of the Jaynee Carolus Award struck out five and walked only one. She allowed nine runs on nine hits with five of those runs earned. Kanagy leaves Mifflin County as the school’s all-time strikeout leader.