Some unlikely heroes – and some likely ones too – came through when the Seneca softball team needed it most Thursday in the Fighting Irish’s wild 8-6 Class 2A state semifinal victory over IC Catholic at Peoria’s Louisville Slugger Sports Complex.

Tessa Krull, who hadn’t pitched since a mop-up relief appearance in a lopsided regional opener, came in with the bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth and pitched out of the jam to keep Seneca in the game.

Her batterymate, little-used reserve catcher Kaydynce Wardlow, entered in the third inning when arm issues prevented starter Lexie Buis from consistently getting the ball back to the pitcher.

The teammate Krull replaced in the circle, Hayden Pfeifer, was 0 for 3 in her first three at-bats, but laced the go-ahead double in the top of the sixth inning, just one pitch after Emma Mino had tied it with an RBI single.

Leadoff hitter Graysen Provance (4 for 4, two stolen bases), Camryn Stecken (two hits, one RBI) and flex Kaylee Klinker (insurance RBI single in the seventh) also starred as Seneca (39-2) rallied from a late deficit with a three-run sixth and held on against a resilient IC Catholic effort.

Seneca advanced to face Carterville, a 3-0 winner over Williamsville, in the championship game at 12:15 p.m. Saturday.

“We do our best to treat everybody we’ve got the same,” Seneca coach Brian Holman said. “If you watch us, every girl takes infield, every girls gets BP, every girl at our practice is expected to work hard. ...

“I’ve never had it like this before, but now that I see it? When you have depth as a softball team, you make yourself pretty tough.”

The Knights (30-6) proved to be pretty tough themselves, answering Seneca’s three-run top of the first inning with a couple runs of their own.

IC Catholic – its 14-hit attack led by Sophia Deoudes (three hits, RBI), Sofia Bucaro (two hits, RBI), Lexi Hoffman (two hits, RBI), Ari Zito (two hits, two runs scored) playing through a hand fracture and Lexi Russ (single, double, both first-inning RBIs) – tied Seneca with single runs in both the third and fourth innings before taking its first lead with another run in the fifth.

“[Giving up] runs doesn’t really rattle us,” Russ said. “We’re a team, we stay calm, and when something happens we pick each other up. That’s who we are. We’re not only teammates; we’re best friends.

“As coach said, we do fight. When we’re down, you’ll never see us have our heads down. We’re always up, we’re always hungry.”

It’s been a season-long characteristic of the Knights, who return to Peoria to play in 2A’s third-place game Friday at 12:30 p.m.

“I thought we came out a little nervous and made some mistakes,” IC Catholic coach Frank Reaber said, “but we fought back. We’ve got a bunch of kids who are injured ... but we never quit fighting. [Seneca] is a good team. We’re a good team. We just made a few mistakes defensively that we don’t normally make, but I’m proud of my team.

“They came to fight.”

It was a rough day right from the beginning for both starting pitchers – IC’s Maddy DiNino (5⅔ IP, 7 R, 6 ER, 11 H, 1 BB, 1 K) and Seneca’s Pfeifer (4⅔ IP, 5 R, 4 ER, 10 H, 1 BB, 7 K). DiNino was releived by Leilani Mendes (1⅓ IP, 1 R, 0 ER, 1 H, 0 BB, 1 K), while Pfeifer was chased with two outs in the fifth and the bases loaded, the aforementioned situation Krull (2⅓ IP, 1 ER, 3 H, 1 BB, 2 K) wiggled out of.

“My emotions were crazy,” Krull said. “I was coming into the game, and I was like, ‘I just have to be confident and get the job done.’ That was going through my mind the whole time. ...

“Obviously, I have all the confidence in the world in Hayden. She had the hot hand and was doing great. I just know that when I warm up I have to be confedent in my spins, in all my pitches, and as soon as I come into the game just pick up where Hayden left off.”

The game-deciding top of the sixth began with two outs and nobody on when Irish No. 9 hitter Aurora Weber worked a walk. Provance followed with a single and eventually scored the winning run on Pfeifer’s two-run two-bagger into right field.

“Once we got those bats going, we connected as a team, got it all together, got our cheers going, just kind of started to hype each other up,” Provance said. “I just knew we were going to get on and she was going to get us [in]. I was just happy for her, happy for all of us.

“That gave us a boost, and we needed that boost to take off and get this win.”