The Owensboro Catholic Lady Aces scored 6 runs in an exciting final inning to take down the E-gals 8-5. With the score at 3-2 going into the final inning, OC scored 3 runs before a big 3-run homer by Harper Latham shot them ahead and into the championship game for the fourth consecutive year.
The seventh inning started with Apollo leading by just a single run at 3-2. Tyranda Stuart and Maci Merritt both singled to put things into motion with runners on first and second. Hannah Robbins stepped up and hit a line drive out to right field to run in Stuart and tie the game at 3-3 with no outs.
After Logsdon was walked to put more runners on first and second, a bold bunt by Gracie Dukate drew attention to first base. An error from Apollo set OC up to take the lead as courtesy runner Taylor Winstead ran across home plate to take the lead at 4-3. While trying to throw out Winstead at home Apollo had another error that kept the play going. This gave Addilyn Simmons time to give the Lady Aces a 2-run lead.
With runners still on first and third, Latham came up huge for Catholic with a homerun out to left field. This jumped OCHS ahead 8-3. Lady Aces head coach Jeremy Phelps said Latham’s confidence fell during the first few innings, but Phelps reassured the team as a whole that it’s not their past at-bats that matter. The one coming up is more important, he said.
“She didn’t have hardly any confidence early in the game,” he said. “She was losing confidence, but she has this aggressive nature. She fouled a couple of pitches off before she gets her pitch. That’s what it takes in games like this when you’ve got two teams that know everything about each other. There’s no secrets. We know them and they know us.”
The E-gals weren’t done yet however, as Taylor Clark hit a lead-off home run of her own to get 1 run back. Two fly outs put pressure on AHS, but they continued to fight. Elizabeth Gardner picked her opportunities from a passed ball and a wild pitch to move from first to third base. This set up Hannah Holder to hit a line drive to center field which ran in Gardner. Catholic curbed Apollo’s hopes of clawing back with a final strikeout. The final score was 8-5.
E-gals head coach Stephen Julian said that the team was close to having big-hitter Arianna Ramirez at the plate during their final push, but OCHS battled to make it hard for them. Ramirez at–bat could have been huge if bases were loaded, he said, but he is happy with the production from the team late in the game.
“Yea, we were one hit away from having Arianna up,” he said. “I was envisioning: ‘Arianna up with bases loaded and two outs. Here we go baby!’ The girls battled and scored a couple there in the last inning. You build on that for next year. Shout out to our seniors Liz Gardner, Mallory Velotta and Hannah Snell. They all played their roles this year and they played them well.”
Defenses ruled the first 4 innings of the game as neither team could score and take the lead. Apollo had a firm grip on the game after finally breaking through in the fifth. With Clark on first and Mallory Velotta on 2nd, Macy Calhoun stepped up and grounded to third which allowed Velotta to reach home and put Apollo on the board. Abbie Butterworth then hit a ground ball towards center field to run in Hannah Tignor and Clark.
Owensboro Catholic didn’t take long to respond as Latham to score hit a ground ball right towards the mound. The resulting fielder’s choice allowed Logsdon to score and for Emma Riney to advance to third. Maren Riney then hit the ball towards first to allow Emma to score at home for a 3-2 scoreline.
The Lady Aces will face off against a tough Lady Panthers team in a rematch of last year’s district championship. Phelps said his team has their word cut out for them as DC is a very good fundamental team. However, they have played Daviess County enough times this year that he is confident that both teams will come in ready to play.
“We’ve played them enough times,” he said. “We’ll get through this one here and then go to work on them first thing in the morning to see if we can’t put a gameplan together for them if the weather cooperates. That’s a nice team over there, but we know about them. We saw them play the other night and we saw them play all year. That’s a good fundamental team, so we’ve got our word cut out for us. They’ll come ready and we’ll come ready.”
