White Knoll pops up with a win in lower state title game

Pop-ups plagued the White Knoll softball team in the 5A Lower State Championship game Friday night, almost to the very end.

With two outs in the bottom of the eighth and the Timberwolves tied 2-2 with Wando, Maddie Miller came to bat with Hanna Goodwin on board after she had legged out an infield single. The previous two Timberwolves outs were infield pop-ups, but Miller kept cool.

Warriors pitcher Alyssa Heinrich delivered a 1-1 pitch. Miller swung and drove it high and far, down the left-field foul line and into the pine trees beyond the fence. Miller walked off the field with her team clinching a 4-2 victory.

“I was trying not to drop (the bat),” Miller said. “Everybody else was getting under the ball, so I was thinking middle, middle, middle, line drive. And when I swung, I knew it was out. It felt so good just to know we’re going to state now.”

The Timberwolves (27-2) head to the state championship series next week. They play the Byrnes-Boiling Springs winner of the Upper State bracket for the state championship in a best-of-three series beginning at White Knoll on Monday.

It nearly wasn’t to be, as the normally heavy-hitting Timberwolves had only three hits going into the eighth and nine pop-ups in 33 at-bats in the game.

“It’s frustrating for them, especially because they were trying to hit it out of the park,” Timberwolves coach April Farr said. “They were just out in front and off balance.”

The heavy-hitting Timberwolves were somewhat cold earlier in the game. Heinrich, who worked a complete game, one-hit White Knoll through five innings, although she walked two and hit two batters in that stretch.

“She threw very well and kept us off balance,” Farr said. “But I just knew that if we could stay in there and keep hanging with them, eventually we could win.”

Wando got a run in the third when Mattie Willis led off the inning with a single and later came home when Kennely Rhue reached on a two-out error.

White Knoll got that run back in an odd fashion. With one out, Jenna Leaphart at second and Miller at first, Shelbie Davies hit a long fly ball.

The ball popped out of Emma Birsner’s glove in center field, but Willis, the left fielder, was close enough to snag it.

Throughout that play, Leaphart stayed tagged up at second and raced around third. When Willis fired the ball to Jordyn Stefani at second, Leapheart headed for home.

Wando had thought they had completed a double play, not knowing that Leaphart had remained at second throughout the affair in the outfield, and ran off the field. After a lengthy discussion among themselves and both coaches, the umpires ruled Leaphart safe and placed Miller at second.

When play resumed, Wando got a run in the sixth to take a 2-1 lead. Andrea Lyon evened the score at 2-2 with a two-out solo home run.

Both teams were scoreless in the seventh and eighth, until Miller’s drive put White Knoll in the driver’s seat.

“I just told her to relax,” Farr said about what she told Miller, who was hit by a pitch and walked twice in the game. “I told her to hit like she’d hit off me in practice. She told me they walked me, and now I’m ready to hit.”