Wylie senior Macy Alewine is greeted by her Pirate teammates at home plate after she hit a three-run home run in Game 3 of a Class 6A Division I bi-district playoff series from Sachse High School last Friday. Photo by David Wolman / C&S Media
By David Wolman
Although the Wylie softball team lost Game 1 of the best-of-three Class 6A Division I bi-district playoff series against Rockall-Heath 6-2, Pirates head coach Heather Damron felt there wasn’t a lot that needed to be fixed.
Her only criticism was avoiding the big inning.
Rockwall-Heath scored four runs on three hits and three walks in the top of the second inning in an eventual 6-2 loss in Game 1 last Wednesday.
Damron was pleased with how well her team put that one “bad inning” behind them.
The Pirates outscored the Lady Hawks 24-3 over the final two games of the series to book a return trip to the area round.
The clincher was a 12-3 rout by Wylie in Game 3 from Sachse High School last Friday evening.
Wylie took a 1-0 lead after Cori Vogeley hit the ball just out of the reach of a diving Lady Hawk infielder for an RBI single in the top of the first inning to get the Pirates on the board. That lead grew to 2-0 with a fielder’s choice.
Clutch two-out hitting helped Wylie to further distance itself from Rockwall-Heath. Macey Stephenson hit a line-drive single into right field and Katelyn Ashenfelter later made it 5-0 Pirates with a two-run single into center field.
“We just had better at bats in the last two games,” Damron said. “It’s not like that we had horrible at bats in Game 1. In games 2 and 3, we just went up there and trusted the plan more. We were able to come through and scratch those runs across.”
All the while, Wylie got lockdown pitching from Angel Wright. Damron brought in Wright in the fifth inning of the first game of the series to get her the experience of pitching in a playoff game.
Wright, a freshman, not only pitched in Game 1, but she got the start in both Games 2 and 3. She tossed 14 straight scoreless innings, including a five-inning shutout in the middle ballgame of the series, and six shutout innings in the third game.
Although Rockwall-Heath scored three runs in the bottom of the seventh inning, Wylie’s big lead proved more than enough as the Pirates ended the Lady Hawks’ season.
“Sometimes when freshman come in, they’re nervous, but Angel has a real chill personality and demeanor and kind of takes things in stride,” Damron said. “She’s been throwing with the varsity all year long, and they’re really embraced her and showed her a lot of love. I think she feels that, and she feels super comfortable.”
Wylie backed up Wright with great defense.
In Game 3, senior third baseman Macy Alewine caught a hard line drive, then threw across the field to double off a runner at first base. Earlier in the game, senior center fielder Kayla Santiago ran more than 15 feet to track down a hard fly ball to rob a Rockwall-Heath player of an RBI hit.
“Every coach has their thing, but I am a defensive coach,” Damron said. “I stress that because if you can do the fundamentals of the game and make the routine plays, and we can be consistent at it, we give ourselves a chance to win games. Through the years that I’ve been here, my teams have bought into that.”
Alewine helped to put the game out of reach, hitting a three-run home run over the wall in left field in the fifth inning for an 8-0 Wylie lead.
“That was big,” Damron said. “You’re in the third inning, and you’re up 5-0, but they’re a good team. They could have easily strung something together. It could have been a 5-5 game. It was really the cherry on top for Macy to come up and get that hit and bring in three runs. It kind of deflated them a little bit more.”
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