Softball: Seneca edges WFC 6-5 to take Tri-County Conference championship

SENECA — The Seneca softball club knew from experience that winning a conference championship is never easy.

In this school year, the Irish senior class started the Tri-County Conference seasons with difficulty in volleyball, basketball and finally softball, where another iffy beginning could be completely erased if they could win Wednesday’s showdown with contending Woodland/Flanagan-Cornell, thus avoiding a possible three-way tie for the crown with the Warriors and Marquette.

But, again, the Irish persevered and came away a champion.

After both teams squandered scoring opportunities throughout the day, the Irish got a sacrifice fly by Kennedy Hartwig and a perfect squeeze bunt by Taya Roe off WFC pitcher Shae Simons in the sixth inning to break a 4-4 tie and send the hosts to a 6-5 victory over the Warriors and the league title all by themselves.

The victory — earned by Alyssa Zellers (4 IP, 2 ER, 6 H, 5 K, 1 BB) in relief of Roe in the circle — gives the Irish (20-6) a final 13-1 mark and the TCC title, plus a huge boost of confidence with regionals starting next week. WFC falls to 18-6, 8-3 in the Tri-County.

“I joke with these seniors about it a lot,” Seneca coach Brian Holman said, “that we put ourselves in a hole in volleyball and had to go on a run to get there; and in basketball, I think we started 2-2 and had to win eight in a row to win it. In softball, we started slow with a poor first game against Marquette and had to figure it out. I don’t know how they did it, but they did, and I couldn’t be more proud of them.

“It’s hard to win one conference title, and to win four including track shows this school has a great group of girl athletes. Now we’re gonna keep going and keep winning as long as we can.”

Against tough-luck losing pitcher Simons (7 IP, 4 ER, 7 H, 4 K, 1 BB), Seneca jumped on top in the first when two errors led to a two-run single by Madi Mino before a downpour and 20-minute delay left the air as thick as the tension at the field.

Still, WFC answered in its third frame when it loaded the bases before RBI singles by both Simons and Emma Highland tied it at 2-2.

Simons and Roe worked out of trouble in the third before the Warriors took the lead on Zellers in the top of the fifth, when Chloe Johnston got one of her three hits on the day, stole second and scored on one of four Irish errors.

But in the home half, Zoe Hougas followed a single by Allie Arwood with a long two-run home run over the fence in left for a 4-3 Seneca edge.

A run-scoring single by Johnston knotted the score 4-4 in the sixth, but again the Irish bounced back with a walk to Mino and a single by Audry McNabb that sent pinch-runner Neely Hougas to third. After McNabb stole second, Hartwig lofted her sac fly to left for the go-ahead tally, then Roe plated the all-important insurance run with a perfect squeeze bunt.

WFC freshman Olivia Chismarick made it a one-run game with two outs in the top of the seventh with a solo homer to right, but Zellers got the final groundout to lock up the title.

“You hope to get to play in games like these, ones that set you up for postseason success,” WFC coach Jordan Farris said. “You’ve got two ballclubs here contending for a title, both are hungry and both with respectable records and plenty of talent, and that talent was on display here today. I was hoping that we’d come out with a lot of energy and purpose, and that’s what we did.

“It’s disappointing. We knew we had business to take care of this week coming into this game, and we did that, so all we could do was put ourselves in a position to win today, and we did that too. [Seneca] just scored one more run than we did.

“It happens. That’s the game.”