CHAMPIONS

BY:Steve Marshall

What a team! What a season! What a finish!

The Southmoore Sabercats won their third Fast-Pitch Softball State Championship in the last eight years but it wasn’t an easy task as each of their three final games went right down to the last inning.

Head Coach Jason Lingo said it was unlike anything he has ever been a part of as a coach.

“It was an amazing weekend,” Lingo said. “I’ve been coaching for a long time in a lot of different sports. I’ve never been involved in three last second games or last inning cliff-hangers like that, much less in the state tournament for a state championship. It was insane.”

The tournament began on Thursday when the Sabercats had to rally from a 5-0 deficit against Jenks. Southmoore chipped away at the lead and trailed by one run headed into the seventh inning. Then the Cardiac Cats took over.

‘Things did not start our way and I’ll give our kids credit,” Lingo said.

“They’re not going to stop fighting. We’re down 5-0 to Jenks. Three of the five were unearned runs. Usually we have done a great job of pitching it and catching it. Our offense at times has been up and down like a roller coaster. But we could always count on pitching and defense to be there for us all the time. We made a few errors, gave up a few runs but we settled down. The kids didn’t give up and we clawed our way back into it.”

Then, in the seventh inning. still trailing by a run with one out, the Cats got a home run from freshman Rylee Fanning to tie the game at 6-6. “At that point we’re thinking great, awesome, unbelievable, now maybe we have a chance to go into extra innings and win it,” Lingo said.

Riley Sharp made sure that didn’t happen as she put one over the fence in left field to give Southmoore a 7-6 lead and the eventual win to advance.

Then in the semifinals on Friday, the Cardiac Cats had to score late again after getting just one hit in the first six innings to defeat Deer Creek 2-1.

Southmoore then had to face Owasso for the state championship. With the score tied 2-2 in the eighth inning, Riley Sharp came to the plate with Abi Jones on second base as the possible winning run.

Sharp said she was just looking for a pitch to hit to the right side and move Jones over to third base. She did better than that. Sharp lined it down the right field line and Jones came around to score and secure the state championship for the Sabercats.

“It’s amazing we worked really hard to get where we wanted to be,” Riley said. “And to see that finally pay off, we couldn’t be happier.”

Brinly Maples was the starting pitcher who pitched every inning of every game in the state tournament for the Sabercats.

“I trusted the girls behind me and my catcher very much and was confident in what we could do,” Maples said. “Once our cathcer Lexi Hernandez came back from injury everything just kind of clicked and we started to roll.”

Tallen Edwards is the Sabercats sophomore shortstop who has grown up with Southmoore softball as the younger sister of four time state champ Trenity Edwards who played her college ball at Missouri and Texas Tech. Edwards said this is an experience that she’ll always remember.

“No matter what, if I was up or I was down we always had each other’s backs,” she said. “I went 0-9 in the first two games at state and all I can remember is all the girls patting me on the back and picking me up and going out there and doing their job to help me and that is something I’ll never forget about this team.”

“Bob Stoops said it over twenty years ago and it always stuck with me,“ Lingo said. “The fun part of it is not afterwards, it’s not being a champion. It’s the journey and all the cool stuff that happens along the way. With this group of girls it’s the lasting impression of them to never stop fighting.”

With all the starters returning, look for the Sabercats to be back in the hunt once again next year.–19SM