Center Grove softball wins third straight regional

<p>COLUMBUS</p><p><strong>A</strong> young Columbus North softball team with five freshmen in its lineup could well become a force one of these days. But the Bull Dogs were no match for Abby Herbst and third-ranked Center Grove on Tuesday.</p><p>Herbst spun her third no-hitter of the season, and home runs from Lexi Fair early and Kaci Finchum late helped the Trojans pull away for a 7-0 triumph in Class 4A regional play.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery<p>The Trojans (25-3) will face Cathedral in the semifinal round of the Bedford North Lawrence Semistate on Saturday morning. Center Grove won an April meeting with the Irish, 15-2.</p><p>“They had my outside ball scouted, so I had to work in and out more a little bit,” Herbst said, “but I was confident coming into that game. I knew we were going to hit (Columbus North pitcher Peri Foust). She threw a great game; we just came out guns blazing.”</p><p>After going down in order in the top of the first, the Trojans got on the scoreboard in the second when Fair crushed a 2-1 pitch well past the left-field wall for a leadoff home run.</p><p>Center Grove appeared poised to break it open against Foust in the fourth, but came away with nothing. Herbst beat out a double to lead off the inning, and after Fair was hit by a pitch, Lex Warner knocked a long single to center to load the bases with nobody out. But Foust wriggled free courtesy of a double-play liner and a strikeout.</p><p>The freshman wasn’t so fortunate after that.</p><p>Piper Belden reached on a two-out base hit in the fifth and stole second, called safe after the Bull Dogs dropped the tag. That set the stage for Addy Osborn, who tucked a double inside the line in shallow left. Herbst followed with an RBI single to center, giving herself a three-run cushion.</p><p>Center Grove chased Foust in the sixth with a one-out RBI double by Alexis Rudd, and Finchum came off the bench and greeted reliever Rachel Cowan with a two-run blast to left center, making it 6-0. Warner followed a Fair triple with a sacrifice fly in the seventh to cap the scoring.</p><p>All the while, Herbst was in cruise control. The lone Bull Dog baserunner came in the first inning, when Cowan reached on a two-out error, but the Miss Softball candidate responded by retiring the next 19 hitters. She struck out seven, with most of the batted balls otherwise resulting in easy outs. Columbus North did not hit a ball out of the infield all night.</p><p>“That’s her best game, in my opinion, I’ve seen her pitch,” Coleman said. “She was mixing … in complete control. I would say almost all the batters were under four pitches — I mean, you don’t see that. She got ahead, stayed ahead; she was special today.”</p><p>Herbst and the Trojans will need to be special again at Saturday’s semistate. Should they defeat Cathedral, they’ll have to beat either Brownsburg, who edged Center Grove early in the season, 2-1, or a Gibson Southern team that knocked them out of the semistate two years ago.</p><p>Coleman likes her team’s chances no matter the opposition.</p><p>“We have some really special kids,” she said, “and I think they’re just heating up, and we feel good as a team mentally. They’re just vibing together, and that’s right where we want to be right now. Saturday’s going to be a dogfight, so we’ve just got to be ready.”</p><p>“Our goal is to make it one step further than we did last year, and that would be to make it to state,” Herbst added. “We’re just going to try and stay calm and compete. That’s what we’ve been doing, and we’re going to continue to do that.”</p>