Pioneers write perfect end to storied season
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter An emotional Shelby Morris holds West Greenes trophy after beating Williams Velley High School in PIAA A XI Chamions at Penn State on Friday, June 16, 2017.
Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter West GreeneþÄôs Shelby Morris hugs Lexie Mooney after beating Williams Valley in the PIAA A XI Chamions at Penn State on Friday, June 16, 2017.
STATE COLLEGE – Many years from now, the phone is going to ring at the home of Bill Simms.
On the other end of the line will be a high school softball coach, maybe from his own West Greene, asking him to give a pep talk to their team.
“We really need it,” they’ll say. “You’ll know what to say.”
Simms will probably be more than happy to talk about that muggy Friday in June when the most amazing game in West Greene softball history was played.
He’ll tell them that everything went wrong early, how somehow the Pioneers had three hits and a walk in the first inning and didn’t score. One runner was thrown out at the plate and another doubled up on fly out.
He’ll tell them how his defense treated the softball as if it were made of thorns, committing two errors and allowing five runs. That made it 7-0.
That’s right, 7-0.
Teams just don’t come back from that type of deficit, especially in a pressure-packed game such as the PIAA Class A championship, against an extremely talented team such as Williams Valley and in front of a couple thousand fans.
But that is exactly what West Greene did, scoring nine of the final 10 runs over the last five innings and coming away with a 9-8 victory against Williams Valley on a well-manicured Nittany Lion Field, the same Williams Valley team that West Greene lost to in walk-off fashion in last year’s Class A title game.
In their worst-played game, West Greene still managed one of the most unlikely of victories.
The Pioneers didn’t quit, didn’t allow a poor start dictate the rest of the innings and, maybe most important, didn’t allow themselves to be consumed by what others might have believed to be a hopeless situation.
West Greene erupted for two runs in the third and four more in the fourth inning as the large Pioneer crowd came back to life.
The statistics won’t show it but Jade Renner pitched the final five innings with a maturity far beyond her freshman status. She allowed one run over those five innings and wasn’t rattled when Williams Valley got a runner to third base with only one out in the bottom of the seventh inning. She got the biggest strikeout of her young career when Jamie Nieman swung at air for the second out of the inning. It might not have happened earlier in the playoffs, when she was upset over the home plate umpire’s strike zone in a quarterfinal win over Claysburg-Kimmel.
And when Madeline Bordner grounded out to third base to end the game, Renner was right there in the middle of the celebration with the other players responsible for such a remarkable comeback.
In the postgame interviews, Renner talked with excitement and a bit of incredulity over this historic comeback.
Simms, who has been the steadying hand over this team, finally let his emotions go, turning away from the nosy sports writers to brush away his tears.
Life has changed for these Pioneers. No longer are they underdogs, having surpassed all expectations. Maybe the most delicious part is they have a chance to do it again next year.
But that’s fodder for another conversation down the road.
Assistant sports editor Joe Tuscano can be reached at jtuscano@observer-reporter.com.