Mt. Vernon’s Shelby Rakosky tries to defend against Pendleton Heights during the Class 4A Sectional 9 final on Saturday, May 28, 2022.
Tom Russo | The Daily Reporter
PENDLETON — In a season that has shown exponential growth, Mt. Vernon experienced the growing pains that go with the development of its young softball team in Saturday’s championship game of Class 4A Sectional 9.
Without a senior on its club, and just three players that were part of last year’s semi-state team, Mt. Vernon had its 2022 softball season come to an end with a 10-1 loss to Pendleton Heights at Legends Field Saturday.
Mt. Vernon had won five in a row and six of the last seven coming into the title game, but the hard-hitting veteran Arabians, ranked No. 7 in the latest Softball Coaches Association of Indiana Class 4A poll, were too much for the Marauders, who had one freshman, four sophomores and four juniors in their starting lineup.
Mt. Vernon ends the year with a 13-9 record.
“I think that our inexperience of playing in a game at this level, and youngness of our team really showed tonight,” Mt. Vernon coach Veronica Kirby said. “It’s a bummer. I know this team grew so much this year. I am so proud of what they accomplished. They had a winning season. We beat (No. 4) New Pal and we played a lot of good teams tight.
“Unfortunately, (their hitters) got to see our pitcher (freshman Graci Hines) five times. You can’t see a pitcher that many times. Defensively, we just didn’t get it done. The ball is not going to fall your way when you don’t get it done defensively.”
Three unearned runs in the second inning gave Pendleton Heights a 4-1 lead. The Arabians scored another unearned run in the fifth to extend their advantage to 7-1.
“(Graci) pitched her tail off,” Kirby said of her first-year pitcher. “She is only 14 (years old). I can’t wait to see what she does the next three years.”
Late in the year, Mt. Vernon beat the state-ranked Dragons, then gave Hoosier Heritage Conference champion, and an eventual sectional winner, Class 3A No. 3 Yorktown, a scare in a 5-4 loss.
Mt. Vernon’s lone loss, prior to Saturday, in its last seven games came against Yorktown.
As disappointing a day it was for Kirby and her team, she likes the future of her team.
“We did nothing but grow tremendously and get better and improve,” Kirby added. “I am not going to lose anybody. I have all these kids coming back with the experience they got this season. They are going to have this fire in them. They’ve seen it. They’ve seen what they can do and look what they accomplished. They got to the sectional championship game.”
It was the fourth straight season Mt. Vernon and Pendleton Heights had met in the sectional tournament. Up until Saturday’s game, the team that lost in their HHC regular-season contest, won in the tournament.
In 2018, Mt. Vernon beat Pendleton Heights during the regular season, but the Arabians avenged the loss in a sectional semifinal, on their way to winning the tournament title over Anderson.
In 2019, after losing to the Arabians in an HHC game, Mt. Vernon beat Pendleton Heights, 2-1, in a nine-inning thriller for the sectional title.
With no game in 2020 due to the pandemic, the rivalry was renewed last season. Pendleton Heights won by run-rule in the regular season, but the Marauders did the same in the sectional championship game, beating the Arabians 13-1 on their way to the semistate round.
Earlier this month, Pendleton Heights handed Mt. Vernon its last loss prior to the stretch of games where they won six of seven.
On Saturday, it didn’t take long for the Arabians to take the lead. The second batter of the game, Hailee Brunnemer, crushed a pitch over the center field fence for a 1-0 lead. It was her eighth home run of the season.
Mt. Vernon evened the game after its first at-bat. Shelby Rakosky, Easton Wampler and Drew Fithian – the only player that were on last year’s team — each had singles. Wampler and Fithian hits came after two outs. Rakosky scored on Fithian’s knock to left field.
The Arabians had four hits and took advantage of a pair of Marauder errors to score three times in the second inning.
It started when Khloee Gregory reached on a throwing error. Bo Shelton’s sacrifice bunt attempt turned into a single. Katelin Goodwin reached on an infield single. It scored Gregory. A poor throw to first enabled Goodwin to get to second base and Shelton to third. Brynn Libler followed with an RBI-ground out. With two outs, Brunnemer singled to score Kylie Fisher, who came in to pinch run for Goodwin.
Libler made it 5-1 with a fourth-inning leadoff homer. A left-handed hitter, she hit the ball over the left-center field fence. The senior third baseman had an RBI in each of her first three at-bats. In the fifth, after Gregory had walked and Shelton singled, she got a base hit to right field to score Gregory. It gave the Arabians a 6-1 lead. They added another in the frame when Kiah Hubble’s ground ball was mishandled, enabling Shelton to score.
The Arabians had four home runs. In the sixth, they added two more. Gregory hit a one-out two-run homer, following a Caroline DeRolf single. Goodwin also hit a home run. It was Gregory’s team-best ninth home run of the season.
Mt. Vernon had six hits. Leadoff hitter Rakosky had two singles. Sophomore Ainsley Baer had two hits, including the lone extra-base hit. She hit a leadoff double in the seventh inning.
“To win in the sectional against Mt. Vernon was very exciting for us,” Pendleton Heights coach Rob Davis, noting recent losses to the Marauders in the championship games, said. “I think we played, pretty much, a flawless game.”
The Arabians (24-6) will travel to North Central Tuesday in a Class 4A regional game.
Pendleton Heights 10, Mt. Vernon 1
Pendleton Heights (24-6);130;123;0; —;10;15;1
Mt. Vernon (13-9);100;000;0; —;1;6;3
2B: Kiah Hubble (PH); Ainsley Baer (MV). HR: Hailee Brunnemer, Brynn Libler, Khloee Gregory, Katelin Goodwin (PH).
WP: Eliza Findlay (7 IP, 7K). LP: Graci Hines.
