Center Grove’s Riley Janda (8) is crowned by teammates after hitting a first-inning home run during Thursday’s sectional final against Mooresville.
Zayne Spangler | For the Daily Journal
Center Grove coach Alyssa Coleman loves seeing her team score with two outs.
Thursday night’s sectional final must have felt like her birthday, Christmas and a lottery win rolled into one.
The Class 4A No. 5 Trojans scored every single one of their runs with two away during a 10-3 shellacking of eighth-ranked Mooresville at Russ Milligan Field.
“When you score with two, and you keep doing that, it makes the other team quit,” Coleman said. “That’s the goal.”
It was a particularly satisfying way to rid themselves of a recent nemesis. The Pioneers had knocked Center Grove out of the postseason in each of the last two years and also won the season opener between the two earlier this spring.
After emphatically reversing that trend, the Trojans (23-6) — now winners of 13 consecutive games — will travel to East Central for a regional game next Tuesday.
“We wanted it more than anything,” senior center fielder Hannah Haberstroh said. “We lost to Mooresville first game this season, and previous seasons we’ve lost to them in the postseason. We wanted to play them.”
Senior shortstop Riley Janda got Center Grove on the board in the bottom of the first inning when she turned on a 3-0 pitch from Mooresville starter Reagan Bauer and crushed it over the fence in dead center field. Junior Sydney Herrmann followed with a solo blast of her own, driving an 0-2 offering out to left center.
Having broken the ice with the long ball, the Trojans used the small-ball approach to tack on three more runs in the second. Madisyn Tharpe led off with a base hit, and a sacrifice bunt by Mae Munson moved courtesy runner Kynadee Warner to second. That set the stage for a string of three straight RBI hits — an infield single by Haberstroh and doubles by Brynn Meyer and Janda.
The Pioneers (23-8) got on the board in the top of the fourth when Bauer led off with a double and came in two batters later on a sacrifice bunt by Sophie Culp, but Center Grove responded in the bottom of the frame, pushing the lead to 7-1 when another Janda two-bagger scored Munson and Haberstroh.
Like every other RBI hit the Trojans had, that one came with two out.
“Two outs doesn’t change anything,” Janda said. “We’re still going in hungry, ready for the pitch that we’re looking for, and we capitalize on it.”
The home team nearly ended it via the 10-run rule in the fifth inning, loading the bases with two out and plating a pair of runs on a Haberstroh single. With the potential winning run on second, though, Mooresville reliever Zoey Kugelman was able to induce a groundout to keep the game alive.
Still, the cushion was more than enough for Trojan starter Riley Henson, who struck out the first four hitters she faced and was in control throughout the contest. She scattered five hits and struck out eight without a walk over her six innings of work, with the only real dent coming on a two-run homer by Kugelman in the sixth.
“She looks good, she looks sharp,” Coleman said of Henson. “She wants the ball. She’s hungry. All of our seniors are, and they’re leading the ship.”
After a solo homer by pinch hitter Hayden Baird produced Center Grove’s final run in the bottom of the sixth inning, Barrett came in to close things out in the seventh, whiffing all three Pioneers she faced to end it.
Janda and Haberstroh each finished the game 3 for 4, with Janda knocking in four runs and Haberstroh three; Tharpe was 2 for 2 with a walk. Eight different Trojans contributed at least one hit.
Haberstroh said that the disappointment of seasons past is motivating Center Grove to make a deep tourney run this time around. The current group of seniors hadn’t won a sectional since its freshman year and is still seeking its first regional crown.
“We want it for each other,” she said. “That’s just been our thing the whole season; we’ve been preaching, we want to go far this season.”
If the Trojans continue to play the way they did against the Pioneers, there may be no stopping them. Everything a championship team needs — power hitting, timely base hits, aggressive baserunning, strong pitching, you name it — was on display Thursday evening.
Coleman has talked all season about how scary her squad could be once everyone got healthy and everything came together. Center Grove seems to be approaching that peak at the perfect time, much like they did when they won the 4A state title in Coleman’s debut season of 2019.
Four more victories still stand between the Trojans and that highest of highs, but …
“It’s pretty fun to be us right now,” Coleman said with a smile.
