HASTINGS —As the wind picked up and the threat of more rain moved in on the Smith Softball Complex, Wayne softball coach Rob Sweetland had one word to sum up Thursday’s 9-4 loss to Freeman in the Class C State Softball Championships.
Weird.
The change in the weather notwithstanding, it was a weird play that turned the tide of the elimination-round matchup between the Blue Devils and Falcons, sending Freeman on in the tournament while ending Wayne’s first trip to state in three years with an 0-2 mark.
Trailing 4-3, Wayne was threatening to take back control of the game after Kierah Haase was hit by a pitch, Taytem Ellis doubled and Delaney Kruse — who had homered earlier in the game — was intentionally walked to load the bases with one out.
Jersi Jensen hit a line drive that Freeman pitcher Sydney Lenners tipped. Second baseman Dakota Haner picked up the ball and flipped it to shortstop Taelyn Lang who was blocked by Kruse and couldn’t make a throw to first. Haase came home on the play, but after the umpires conferred, it was ruled that Kruse was out for interference, negating what would have been the tying run.
“If (Lenners) doesn’t get a glove on it, the ball goes into center field and we probably take the lead there,” Sweetland said. “It was just one of those plays that didn’t go our way.”
Not only did the play take away the tying run, it sparked the Falcons’ bats in the sixth as they had three hits, highlighted by a three-run homer by Lenners, that turned it from a tie game into a 7-3 lead and the Blue Devils couldn’t recover.
“It was a weird day and a weird game,” he said after his team finished its 23-8 season. “It seemed like every bounce went their way. We had the bases loaded there and a hard-hit ball tips off her glove and we get called for interference because we didn’t slide into second.”
Sweetland credited Freeman for taking advantage of the opportunities when they came up.
“They hit the ball hard and put pressure on us and we hung in there tried, but we just didn’t have enough ammunition,” he said.
The Blue Devils fired the first shot in the second inning with a two-out opposite-field home run by Kruse that gave the Wayne girls the early lead.
That lead didn’t last long, as the Falcons touched Samantha Gubbels for three runs and four hits in the second inning before Mackenzie Nissen came on in relief, and the Blue Devils were never able to regain the momentum.
Kloey Johnson hit a two-out solo homer in the fourth to give Freeman a 4-2 lead, but Wayne answered in the bottom of the inning when Jersi Jensen brought LIberty Titiml home with a sacrifice fly to cut the deficit back to one.
Wayne was able to get its final run in the seventh on a groundout by Taytem Ellis, scoring Bolles, but it wasn’t enough as the Blue Devils went 0-2 in their first trip back to state since 2019.
Freeman outhit Wayne 14-7 in the contest. Bolles and Ellis both had two hits and Kruse had two RBI’s. Gubbels took the pitching loss.
Complete tournament coverage in next week's edition of The Wayne Herald.
