CM rallies from six down, but Highland wins on walk-off HR

With the game tied 9-9 and a runner on second and two outs, Angelo intentionally walked No. 3 batter Maggie Grohmann to get to cleanup batter Trauernicht, and after Griffith worked the count to 0-2, Trauernicht battled back before belting a 3-2 pitch over the left-center field fence to send the Bulldogs (24-7) to the Highland Sectional, where they’ll face Charleston, which defeated Effingham 5-2 to claim the Centralia Regional, in a Wednesday semifinal.

“That young lady’s hit the ball hard all day, but in the two regional games that they’ve played, I haven’t seen her hit one out,” Angelo said of Trauernicht. “I saw her hit the ball hard, yeah, but she was 1-for-4 against us and two outs, I liked our chances with her at the plate rather than the other young lady [Grohmann]. They’re both great hitters, and I understand that.”

Angelo paused for a moment, as Grohmann stepped to the plate before calling time for the intentional walk and the only runner that mattered was Alex Schultz, who singled with one out, at second base.

But Grohmann, who homered in the second and drove in three runs early in the game, was having a more productive day at the plate than Trauernicht, who was 1-for-4 but hitting the ball hard despite just a single in the first.

“That’s exactly what I told the girls after the game. I said, ‘Pick your poison. Do you want to face our three-hitter there or our four-hitter?'” Highland coach Glenn Nicholls said, defending Angelo’s decision. “She was squaring up the ball pretty well. That’s why I walked up to her there before the at-bat and I said, ‘Don’t change a thing. You’ve been seeing the ball well here.’ Then she got ahead of her 0-2 and I’m like, ‘Oh, this could be trouble,’ and you hope she doesn’t chase something out of the zone, but she got it to a full count and then the pitcher had to groove one.

“Our three-hitter was red-hot. She hit a home run earlier in the game and hit two home runs against Mascoutah a couple days ago and she’s been seeing the ball well too. It was definitely the right call. I would have done the same thing, set up a force out.”

The dramatics came after the Eagles. who closed at 15-14, rallied from 8-2 and 9-4 deficits. CM scored twice in the sixth then three more times in the seventh to force the Bulldogs into a walk-off situation when they started to wear down Highland starter Sophia Donoho plus taking advantage of some uncharacteristic Bulldog miscues.

“They don’t quit, and that’s the way it’s been for them all year,” Angelo said. “They are a scrappy team, they stay together, they weather the storm and that’s exactly what they did today. Sixth inning, they said, ‘We’re going to make them bat in the bottom of the seventh,’ and that’s exactly what they did.”

Danika Chester and Skylar Johnson’s back-to-back singles in the sixth made it a 9-6 game, and then CM pushed three runs across in its final at-bat when Chester walked with the bases loaded and Johnson’s fielder’s choice grounder turned into two runs after an error at second base.

“I’m talking to them to just get an out and we’re trying to get lead runners and that really kind of hurt a little bit,” Nicholls said. “Sometimes you’ve just got to get an out. It’s never over until it’s over. I don’t know if we were getting a little complacent or not, it’s really hard to say, but every inning, my pitcher would come off and we’d tell her, ‘We need six more outs, we need three more outs, have you got it in you?’ She just looks me dead in the eye and said, ‘I’ve got this coach, I’ve got this.’ The results really didn’t say, ‘You got this.’ We were fortunate to get out of some of those innings, no doubt about it.”

It’s difficult to hang their hats on missed opportunities, but despite scoring nine runs, the Eagles, who rapped out 13 hits, also left 13 runners on base, including the bases loaded in the first, sixth and seventh innings.

“We left bases loaded in the first. I think we did that twice, we left bases loaded,” Angelo said. “It’s something we can build on for next year, something that is a mental note for us we know we have to work on and these girls are hard workers, so it’s something that they’ll put in the back of their mind and get at when the season starts again next year, which I’m already looking forward to.”

Highland, which defeated CM 9-5 on April 24 and 11-4 on May 10, set the tone in the game by scoring eight runs in the first three innings with small ball before some timely, big hits. Highland rapped out 14 hits off Griffith in 6 2/3 innings.

After spotting CM a 2-0 lead in the top of the first, the Bulldogs tied it in the home half before scoring four times in the second to go up 6-2, highlighted by Grohmann’s two-run home run.

“We’ve got a lot of lefties in the lineup and they love to bunt, they love to drag and slap and push and all that good stuff,” Nicholls said. “We’ve got signs for all of that stuff and we had a couple good push bunts early in the game. That is definitely a weapon in our arsenal, no doubt about it. So when you do get a couple kids on base, the right kids are coming up behind them.”

CM had a miscue in the field in each of the first three innings that led to three unearned runs.

“I don’t know how many errors we had that led to runs,” Angelo said. “I don’t know if we had any errors, maybe in the first inning we had one. But the bottom line is Highland’s a good team, and they have a nice pitcher who does a good job, moves the ball around, changes speed. That’s the advantage of being the home team and batting in the bottom of the seventh.

“We worked on defending the bunt and had some miscues that hurt us. But you’ve got to give credit to Highland. They put the bat on the ball.”

But CM scrapped and made things tough on Highland in the end. 

Avari Combes led the way going 3-for-5 with a double, two RBI and two runs scored. Bella Thien, Johnson, Ella Landers and Lauren Hardy each had two hits. Thien, who batted leadoff, and Hardy, the No. 9 hitter, each scored three times.

“I know they’re a very competitive team,” Nicholls said of CM. “Both times we’ve played them, the final scores look like they were one-sided, but they definitely weren’t. That’s a very competitive team. Every time we play them, they battle.

“My pitcher did a nice job for the first four, four and a half innings or so, but she was throwing a lot. She was way over what we had planned for her. I don’t know what the final count was but in the fourth inning, she was up over 100. We were definitely a little concerned with the pitch count, but I think their pitcher was in the same boat. She definitely threw a lot of pitches as well. Fortunately we ended up being the home team, being the one-seed, and definitely having the last at-bat helped.”