Whiteland’s Josslyn Harbert crosses the plate while Franklin catcher Ashlynn Keser awaits a throw during Wednesday’s game.
Sam Findley | For the Daily Journal
More than a century ago, Hall of Fame baseball player Willie Keeler was asked for the secret to his success at the plate.
Keeler, who boasted a career batting average of .341, had a simple reply: “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.”
The top half of Whiteland’s softball lineup used that approach during Wednesday’s home game against Franklin, and it couldn’t have worked out much better.
Josslyn Harbert, Emma Piercy, Kiley Sullivan and Halle Nett went a combined 12 for 15 with 11 runs and eight RBIs, leading the Warriors to an 11-3 triumph over the Grizzly Cubs.
The win helped Whiteland (6-4, 4-2 Mid-State) split the midweek series with its county rival after Franklin had enjoyed a similarly dominant 10-0 victory on Tuesday.
“We got focused on what we wanted yesterday and we stayed too big-picture,” Warriors coach Harley Roller said. “Today, it was ‘how are we going to get there?’ We know what we want, but how are we going to get there? So we focused on the small things and kept the game simple, and produced.”
The Grizzly Cubs (6-3, 4-2) used their speed to on the board in the top of the first when Adeline Blackwell reached on an infield single, moved all the way to third on a groundout and dashed home on a passed ball. Whiteland, though, answered back several times, starting with four runs in the bottom of the frame.
Harbert led off with a hustling double to left and came in on an RBI single by Piercy, who then scored from second on a Sullivan double. Nett singled to put runners on the corners, and after Sullivan scored on a groundout, Nett came in on an Emma Davis base hit.
Sullivan stretched the Warrior lead to 6-1 with another two-bagger in the second, driving a ball to the wall in right center to score Harbert and Piercy, who started the second inning with consecutive singles. That trio repeated the same act in the fourth, when Harbert came home on Sullivan’s third double of the day. Piercy then trotted in on an RBI single by Nett, with Sullivan tacking on another run when the hit was mishandled in the outfield.
Franklin loaded the bases with nobody out in the sixth, cutting the deficit to 9-2 when Madison Stearns’ bloop single into shallow left scored Corin Dammeier. Sullivan — who pitched a complete game in addition to her hitting exploits — escaped without further damage, though, and Whiteland clapped back with a pair of insurance runs. Piercy’s fourth hit of the game, a triple to left field, brought in Harbert, who was also 4 for 4, to make it 10-2. Piercy scored moments later on a groundout by Sullivan, the sophomore’s fifth RBI of the game.
We’ve been kind of in a slump, and it’s good to have it back,” Sullivan said. “We’ve seen (Franklin starter Bryleigh Carlisle-Haltom) before, and so we kind of remembered how she was, so we attacked early.”
Blackwell added a window-dressing run for the Grizzly Cubs in the seventh, scoring on a double by Dammeier, before Sullivan recorded the final out.
Pitching with the lead made life a bit easier on the sophomore.
“She does much better when she’s loose,” Roller said of Sullivan. “We call her Silly Sully for a reason; she does much better when the tensions are low and she can have some fun and keep a smile on her face.”
Franklin coach Kayla Craft believes that winning so easily on Tuesday might have come back to bite her team in the rematch.
“We just didn’t really produce offensively; we didn’t come ready to play,” she said. “They maybe got a little too confident from yesterday’s win.
“I just told them, season’s only going to get harder. … We’re going to have to work our butts off.”
