Sacred Heart Academy couldn’t follow up one dramatic comeback with another and sustained a 7-3 loss to Summerfield in the Division 4 state softball semifinals at Battle Creek on June 15.
The season ended for Sacred Heart at 31-7.
“We’re pleased to have gotten this far,” said Sacred Heart pitcher Kelsey Poag. “Our team was young. They stepped up during the districts. I’m so proud. We accomplished a lot; I’m proud of our girls. I wish we would have won. We did the best we could.”
The Irish were down to their last out the bottom of the seventh and trailing 3-2 when Erica Hansen delivered an RBI single to make it 3-3.
“This team is resilient,” said Irish coach Amy Gaudard. “We’ve come back in a lot of situations like that. We were all confident, and we knew we could do it.”
But the Bulldogs came back with four runs in the top of the ninth, and the Irish couldn’t respond.
Erica Hansen wound up with two hits, and shortstop Sara Hansen had three hits and scored two runs. Kelsey Poag went the distance as pitcher for Sacred Heart and allowed seven runs on 11 hits. Five errors were critical for Sacred Heart.
“Kelsey pitched well,” Gaudard said. “They hit the ball when they had to. That’s a testament to their hitters. Kelsey pitched a great game.”
Summerfield scored four runs the top of the ninth. “They hit it where we weren’t, and a couple of little things happened. I wish we would have gotten a few more runs when we had the opportunity,” Gaudard said. “The girls played great. I couldn’t be more proud of them.
“We had a lot of runners on base and just didn’t get them in. It was a great season, nothing to hang our heads about. The final four…A lot of people would have loved to have been in our situation. We’re proud of ourselves.”
Sacred Heart was 13-3 in the Mid-State Activities Conference, finishing second behind Vestaburg.
The key reasons that the team made it as far as it did were that the “defense played great, the pitching was great, we had a lot of timely hits,” Gaudard said. “We have a lot of kids coming back. We’ve developed some nice building blocks.”
Once the Irish got through the districts, they won the regionals handily with 13-0 and 14-1 wins over Holton and Mason County Eastern. Next up was a 4-3 edging of All Saints Central in the quarterfinals.