|
|||||||||||||
Printer-Friendly
Email this Story
Post a Comment (0)
Kleinfelter pitches Marshall past Auburn in middle school softball finale
An 8-0 win or a 10-0 win?
A Fauquier County championship or a co-championship?
Both were up for debate, but those details didn’t matter much. Either way, the Marshall Middle School Wolves got to dump a Gatorade bucket of ice on their coach Thursday and celebrate a season-ending victory over the Auburn Middle School softball team.
“It’s been outstanding – a great season; great bunch of girls,” first-year Wolves coach Larry Nalls said after the game at MMS. “I’ve never had so much fun coaching-wise and the way they ended here today it’s just unbelievable. What a way to end the season.”
Whether it ended with an outright county champion or a co-champion with the Auburn Wildcats varied from one dugout to the other. Auburn entered Thursday’s game undefeated with the opportunity to win an outright county title, but then suffered their first loss of the season, so both teams finished with a 7-1-1 record. However, Thursday’s win gave Marshall the head-to-head advantage because it had tied Auburn 8-8 in a previous meeting this spring.
“It depends on how you want to look at it,” said Marshall athletic director Matt Zuras, who believed the Wolves won an outright title. “Being middle school nobody wants to get too [technical.] Talk to them [the Wildcats] I’m sure they can give you the other side of the coin.”
Jeff Anderson did, saying, “We both finished 7-1-1, so both of us won a co-county championship.”
Zuras referenced this past football season as an example of a true co-county championship. Marshall and Cedar Lee MS both finished with a 5-1 record and split a pair of head-to-head games.
This wasn’t a heated debate by any stretch, though. It was nothing but an afterthought. After the game, Auburn players were as pleased as Marshall players because the Wildcats finished the season with their best record in their four year history.
The game itself also ended in unusual fashion. Officially, Marshall won 8-0, but putting that score in the books was a retroactive decision.
Auburn and Marshall played a portion of the bottom of the sixth inning, but then wiped the results off the books. Entering the bottom of the inning, Marshall led 7-0. The Wolves then scored three more runs with Aryn Emswiler’s two-RBI single making it 10-0.
Emswiler’s hit ended up not counting, though. After she reached base, Nalls, Anderson and the umpire met in front of the mound and decided to call the game at 8-0, upon Anderson’s suggestion.
That transpired because Marshall’s bottom of the sixth had begun prior the expiration of the game’s 90-minute time limit. Had it been a quick inning, Auburn could have batted again in the seventh.
It wasn’t quick, though. The time limit expired during the inning and Marshall also added enough runs to end the game by 10-run mercy rule. The decision was made to call the game at 8-0 because of the time-limit rather than 10-0 by mercy rule.
Regardless, Sarah Kleinfelter’s pitching statistics remained in tact and she pitched a gem. The Marshall eighth grader struck out seven batters and allowed just three hits and five walks over six full innings.
“Sarah’s had some good games this year; a lot of good games,” Nalls said.
“After the first inning I felt great. I was just nervous at first,” said Kleinfelter, who will play softball at Fauquier High next season. “It feels awesome because we tied them last time…We worked on hitting changeups because last time they fooled us with their changeups.”
The Wolves still didn’t hit too well, though. They accumulated only four hits against Auburn pitcher Christine Bowman, excluding Emswiler’s final single, but instead capitalized on seven errors, six walks, two hit batsmen, two wild pitches and five stolen bases.
“We made too many fielding errors and we didn’t swing the bat as good as we normally do,” Anderson said. “We made some mistakes that cost us some runs and that’s what hurt us.”
MiAisha Jackson led Marshall by going 1-for-2 with two RBIs and two runs, while Antoinette Bruno went 2-for-4. Auburn’s Michelle Farmer went 2-for-3, while Bowman finished with seven strikeouts on the mound.
You must be logged in to post a comment.