Lady Hornets jump on Har-Ber early for run-rule win at State
EDITOR’S NOTE: In this time of COVID-19, with no sports action, BryantDaily.com will be posting past stories of Bryant athletics either posted on BryantDaily.com (from 2009 to the present) or published in the Bryant Times (from 1998 to 2008).
By Rob Patrick
BENTONVILLE — For the fifth year in a row, the Bryant Lady Hornets softball team has advanced to the semifinals of the Class 7A State Tournament.
Bryant hit the Springdale Har-Ber Lady Wildcats with eight runs in the first two innings and rolled to a 12-2 win in six innings at the Tiger Sports Complex at in the second round of the rain-delayed tourney. The 7A-Central Conference champion Lady Hornets were set to take on the winner of the Conway-Bentonville game on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. Conway and Bentonville were scheduled to play on Monday as well but wet conditions and the discovery that the pitching rubber at Municipal Park was three feet too far from homeplate during the Cabot-Fayetteville game, forced a suspension of play there. That contest and the other quarterfinals were moved to Tuesday.
Wet weather had already pushed back the entire tournament, which was supposed to have started Friday and Saturday, May 1-2.
The Lady Hornets never gave the Lady Wildcats any reason to believe they could win. Har-Ber had rallied to beat Van Buren in a first-round game earlier in the day. But, against Bryant, could only muster a pair of runs in the top of the fifth to keep from being run-ruled until the sixth.[more]
Jenna Bruick, who was on base four times and scored each of those times, led off Bryant’s first inning by being hit with a pitch from Har-Ber’s Hannah Bender. She advanced to second on Christen Kirchner’s groundout then third on a base hit by Cassidy Wilson. Peyton Jenkins walked to load the bases for Jessie Taylor who lashed a two-run single to right.
Sarah Hart followed with a sacrifice bunt that drew a wild throw which sailed into the right-field corner. Jenkins raced home and Taylor followed as Hart sprinted all the way to third. She crossed the plate on Jesseca Cudd’s groundout, making it 5-0.
Kirchner, the starting pitcher for Bryant, had retired the side in order in the top of the first. In the second, she worked around a two-out single by Whitney Rogers.
Bryant’s offensive onslaught continued in the home second. With one out, Bruick beat out an infield hit and Kirchner drilled one to the fence in right-center for an RBI triple. She scored too when Wilson’s grounder to short was misplayed.
After a pitching change, Wilson swiped second and scored on a single to right by Jenkins to make it 8-0.
Bryant head coach Lisa Stanfield took the opportunity to give Jenkins, a freshman, her first taste of pitching in the State tourney. She took over for Kirchner to start the third. She walked Rachel Slank who moved up on a wild pitch. Taylor Kline grounded to Taylor at third. Taylor threw Kline out at first as Slank took off for third. Cudd’s return throw to Kirchner from first was in time completing a 5-3-6 doubleplay.
Chani Wolf singled but Molly Brunyan grounded to short to end the inning.
The Lady Hornets went down in order in the bottom of the inning but, after the Lady Wildcats returned the favor in the top of the fifth, the Lady Hornets tacked on a run. Bruick beat out an infield hit to lead off the inning. She then scored all the way from first on a long double by Kirchner, making it 9-0. Wilson followed with a shot that was picked off by Melissa DeShawn at third. Kirchner was on the run on contact so she was doubled off second to take the sting out of the inning.
“I tell them to play every inning the same,” Stanfield related. “Come out and play hard in the first and finish up in the seventh hard. It’s hard to do that mentally sometimes but, if we’re going to finish we need to learn how to do that, play all seven.
“I was a little wary of what our girls might do having not seen a live pitch in so long,” she added.
The Lady Wildcats came up with half of their game-total of six hits in the fifth as they broke up the shutout. Kline singled in the first run then scored on a double by Wolf before Jenkins worked out of the inning.
The Lady Hornets were retired in order in the bottom of the inning so the game went to the sixth with the score 9-2. Jenkins worked around a one-out single by DeShawn to set up the game-ending uprising in the home half.
Kim Wilson started things by reaching on an error. Paige Turpin slapped a single to left and Bruick was hit by a pitch to load the bases. After Kirchner popped out, Wilson singled to left to chase home two. Jenkins followed with a little swinging bunt and, though she was thrown out at first, Bruick scored to end it.
Bruick, Kirchner, Cassidy Wilson and Taylor each had two hits for the Lady Hornets who improved to 20-7 on the season.
Bryant improved to 20-7 on the season.
Back to the championship game go the Bryant Lady Hornets
BENTONVILLE — Lisa Stanfield lobbied hard to get the game played.
With rain falling for the sixth consecutive day in northwest Arkansas, officials at the Class 7A State softball tournament at Bentonville High School, having finally reached the semifinals, were considering postponing the last two games of the day on Tuesday. The quarterfinals had just been completed and the final four teams were all from the 7A-Central Conference, including Stanfield’s Bryant Lady Hornets, who won the regular-season championship in that league, earning the top seed to the tourney.
In a tournament that featured a 30-1 Fayetteville team as the odds-on favorite, suddenly it was Bryant in the cat-bird seat.
And having the top seed proved to be more of an advantage than usual when it was decided that the game would be played between the Lady Hornets and the rival Conway Lady Wampus Cats. Earlier in the day, the Lady Cats had dodged the raindrops well enough to eliminate the host Lady Tigers of Bentonville 4-1.
With Conway and Bryant in one semifinal, and Cabot, which upset Fayetteville in a game suspended on Monday night and completed Tuesday morning, along with defending State champion North Little Rock in the other, there was the thought that the games could be postponed and to avoid forcing the four teams to travel so far again or stay another night, they could play at a neutral location in central Arkansas to determine which two teams would return to play the State title game in Fayetteville on Saturday. Having already played, Conway was lobbying for that decision and the chance to take on Bryant afresh on another day at another place.
“For one thing, we’ve been playing in this mess all week and there was no reason not to keep playing,” Stanfield related. “I would’ve been fighting the same fight that Conway was fighting if I was in their position. They had to do what they had to do and I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do and push to play. It was tense. I think it was the right thing to do. And I think, tonight, we were the better team anyway.
“Being able to see live pitching (on Monday in a 12-2 win over Springdale Har-Ber) and then come out rested, and having had time to review my notes on Conway, it was really nice to come in fresh,” she added. “We really didn’t feel the rain coming in fresh like that.”
Yes, the game was played and, behind the five-hit shutout tossed by senior Christen Kirchner and a 14-hit attack on offense led by Jessie Taylor and Kayla Sory, the Lady Hornets earned a spot in the Class 7A State championship game this Saturday at noon with an 8-0 win over Conway.[more]
As it turned out, the Cabot-North Little Rock game was postponed when it kept raining during the Bryant-Conway game. Despite bag after bag of Field Dry after almost every half inning, the field was just too soaked. They’ll be playing sometime this week, closer to home, to determine which will take on the Lady Hornets for the title.
It’ll be the third time in Stanfield’s six years at Bryant that the Lady Hornets have been to the championship game. They’re hoping the third time’s the charm.
“It’s a dream come true,” the coach stated, “And we’re fixing to finish this time.”
Beating Conway, the team that probably gave them the toughest time in the regular season, made it all the sweeter. Both times the teams met, they went to extra innings. Conway beat Bryant, 6-4, on the Lady Hornets’ field early in the year. Bryant countered late in the year with a 10-4 win at Conway that took nine innings to decide.
“They’ve been our biggest competition the whole year,” Kirchner explained. “The time they beat us, that just really got to us. We just knew we had to beat them.”
As had been the case against Har-Ber, the Lady Hornets jumped into the lead early, scoring one in the first, two in the second and two more in the third.
“We felt we really needed to jump out quick on Conway,” Stanfield acknowledged. “The girls knew that Conway wasn’t hyped up about playing again in the rain and everything. The girls wanted to play. I think they would’ve wanted to play even if it was our second game. They were just ready to say, ‘We’re in the finals.'”
Kirchner said the rain was no factor for her. “I’m used to pitching in the rain,” she stated. “Whenever I was little, I’d go practice in the rain.
“We wanted to just be patient at the plate,” Kirchner added. “We knew that the rain was going to be a factor, a huge factor.”
Jenna Bruick, one of five freshman (along with Cassidy Wilson, Jessie Taylor, Peyton Jenkins and Kayla Sory) that start for the Lady Hornets, started the bottom of the first with a slap single that she legged out. Kirchner blasted a long fly to the deepest part of the field. It was caught but Bruick tagged and advanced to second. She took third on Cassidy Wilson’s grounder to second then scored on a clutch single up the middle by Taylor.
In the second, Sory singled to right, senior Sarah Hart singled to left and, with one out, Paige Turpin beat out an infield hit to load the bases. Bruick followed with a tap to third that resulted in a force at the plate but Kirchner’s infield hit brought Hart home and, moments later, Turpin raced in from third on a wild pitch to make it 3-0.
In the third, Jenkins reached on a one-out error, Sory beat out a bunt single and, after Hart sacrificed them to second and third, sophomore Kim Wilson ripped a shot to the left of the shortstop that was hit so hard it split the outfielders and went to the fence for a two-run double and a 5-0 advantage.
Kirchner, meanwhile, had pitched around a two-out single to Kristin Shock in the first. In the second, J.B. Davis singled to start the inning and, with one out, was sacrificed to second by Mandy Eggert. Emily Hoover walked but Kirchner got off the hook by getting Jordan Yandell to ground out to Cassidy Wilson at short.
In the top of the third, Nikol Domengeaux singled with one out. Shock walked and Natalye Chudy beat out an infield hit to load the bases. But Kirchner fanned Davis and Hart gunned a throw to Taylor at third to pick off Domengeaux to end the inning.
That started a run in which Kirchner set down 12 batters in a row before giving up a double to Hoover with two out in the top of the seventh. She followed up with a strikeout — her fifth — to end the game.
“I knew she’d be tough today because she just gets tougher when the pressure’s on,” Stanfield observed. “I was real proud of her. It’s easy to complain about the conditions but we went with what was working for the conditions for her, using certain pitches keeping in mind there were certain places she couldn’t step. She pushed through. I knew she would.”
The Lady Hornets had added some insurance by then. In the home sixth, Kirchner doubled to the fence in right-center, Cassidy Wilson walked and Taylor singled in a run. Wilson scored on a groundout by Jenkins and Taylor raced home on a wild pitch before Sory cracked her third hit of the game.
Stanfield thus delivered on what she’d said at the start of the season. “It might be more pressure on myself,” she declared, “but I think if I do my job as a coach, we should be able to win a lot of ballgames.”
Just one more and it’ll be the greatest season in Lady Hornets’ fast-pitch softball history.
So far.
