Clare softball survives early deficit; claims second straight regional title

By BEN MURPHY

Cleaver Sports Writer

A little adversity is nothing the Clare softball team can’t handle. So, when the number one ranked Lady Pioneers fell behind 3-0 in the top of the first inning against Bullock Creek in the two’s Division 3 regional championship game at Houghton Lake on Saturday; they didn’t flinch. Instead, they answered right way, plating three runs in their half of the first and eventually took a lead and a 5-3 victory: giving them their second straight regional championship.

“It was awesome, it was another step,” head coach Shane Kelly said. “We have some steps that we put in place at the beginning of the year. This was step three in the process of what we have; we won our conference; we won a district and now a regional. Now, we are going to be pushing to win a quarterfinal game.”

After two uncharacteristic Clare fielding errors helped The Lady Lancers take a 3-0 lead, the Pioneers responded with three runs of their own to knot things back up.

Clare took the lead in the bottom of the third, getting Madison Jones to hit a solo home run. They tacked another run on in the sixth. Pam Allen led the inning off with a triple, and she came in to score on a well-executed squeeze bunt by Alissa Brandon.

Kyley Wyman entered the game pitching in the fourth, and she shut out the Lancers for the final four frames, striking out 10 batters in the process. Jones threw the first three innings in the circle.

The Lancers did get two runners on with two outs in the seventh, but Wyman go the final out of the game without any damage.

“We did not start well the first inning,” Kelly said. “This year we have struggled a bit in the second game. It was sort of a wake-up call for us. The girls never wavered, we battled back and once we tied them and then took the lead we never looked back. It’s good to face some adversity in some of these games and not just blow people out, it is good to be battle tested. That was huge, hopefully it pays dividends.”

Allen and Jones (two RBI) had two hits apiece and adding one each was Brandon (two walks, one RBI), Addison McMillan, Breez Yarger (one RBI), and Macie Hensley. Morgan Campbell also had an RBI.

Clare reached the championship thanks to their 8-1 victory over Standish-Sterling earlier in the day.

“Standish won the state championship two years ago and they have a great coach and a great program,” Kelly said. “We knew they were going to be tough, they got their pitcher back and she has been shutting people down.”

Wyman was the winning pitcher; she went all seven innings and gave up one earned run on four hits and she struck out 14 batters.

At the plate, Yarger had one triple, one single and one RBI while Brandon (two RBI) and Campbell had one double and one single each. Getting two singles each was McMillan (three RBI) and Tessa Kelly (one RBI). With one single apiece was Jones, Wyman, Hensley and Allen (one RBI).

“We smashed the ball,” Kelly said. “We just hit it (right to people). We had an opportunity to score more runs but we hit it too hard and too well.”

Clare (37-2 overall) took on second ranked Gladstone on Tuesday in a quarterfinal game up at Cheboygan. The winner of that game moves on to the state semi-finals on Friday at 5:30 p.m. at Michigan State University. The state championship game will take place on Saturday, also at 5:30 p.m. at MSU. The Pioneers made it to the state semi-finals last year. They’ve been the top ranked team in Division 3 most the team, and so far have lived up to the billing as they look to make it even further.

“We’ve been saying since the beginning we need to finish what we started, and they are doing a great job of that,” Kelly said. “Our goal is to get back to MSU and to surpass what we did last year and get to the championship game. It’s one game at a time, our best against their best and if we keep playing our game I like our odds.”