<p>Lexi Fair hadn’t been able to touch anything Izzy Harrison had thrown all evening long.</p><p>The Center Grove catcher was 0 for 4 against Franklin ace Harrison with a pair of strikeouts as the two teams went to the bottom of the 11th inning in last year’s Class 4A softball sectional final. Potentially due up for a fifth time if one of her teammates got on base, Fair recalls getting a pep talk from Abby Herbst, the Trojans’ senior pitcher.</p><p>"Abby looked at me and was like, ‘Get your head out of your butt,’" Fair said.</p><p>Coming up with two out and a runner on first, Fair then delivered a walk-off double to straightaway center field that gave the Trojans a 1-0 triumph — one that paved the way to an eventual state championship.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]<p>That hit capped an instant classic that saw two elite pitchers trading unhittable lasers for hours on end. Herbst and Harrison each struck out 17 batters, and neither walked a batter until Herbst drew a two-out free pass in the 11th with Fair on deck.</p><p>Pinch runner Sydney McConnell came in and promptly rounded the bases on Fair’s big hit.</p><p>Harrison, a University of Kentucky recruit who still has one year of high school softball left after losing this spring to the COVID-19 pandemic, doesn’t remember what pitch she threw to Fair on that decisive double.</p><p>"Something she hit," Harrison said with half a chuckle. "Something that was not supposed to be there."</p><p>The game was a clash between two major Division I-level pitchers; Herbst, Indiana’s Miss Softball in 2019, just finished her freshman year at the University of Wisconsin. And both were on their "A" game on the Center Grove diamond that night.</p><p>With the score knotted at 0-0 through seven innings, both hurlers seemed to find another gear. Harrison, for her part, doesn’t remember feeling fatigued at all — somehow, she says, she felt like she was throwing harder with each subsequent inning.</p><p>"Before the game, I was pretty pumped up," Harrison said. "I definitely knew that after the seventh inning I had to keep pushing.</p><p>"I was just in a zone that whole game."</p><p>Unfortunately for the then-sophomore, so was Herbst — and against a Center Grove team with more proven firepower in its lineup, all it took was one brief slip to determine the outcome.</p><p>After Herbst drew that walk, Fair — who had been beating herself up all night — delivered the knockout punch.</p><p>"I was like, ‘All right, we’re attacking the first pitch,’" Fair recalled, "and that’s what I did, and it went over the center fielder’s head. I was just happy that the game was over."</p><p>She certainly wasn’t the only one; Center Grove knew that it had dodged a bullet.</p><p>"I don’t know how we won that," Trojans coach Alyssa Coleman said. "(Harrison) had 17 strikeouts and one (walk) given up. How does someone lose that game?"</p><p>"Honestly, right after the game happened I tried to block it from my memory," Herbst added, "because it was one of the most nerve-wracking things I’ve ever gone through."</p><p>Current Franklin head coach Shelby Biehl was an assistant during that game a year ago, and she was tasked with calling the pitches that Harrison threw. Biehl remembers being on pins and needles because any one pitch could have altered the outcome, especially in extra innings — but she marvels at the poise that Harrison exhibited throughout that contest.</p><p>"She can turn something on when she knows, ‘It’s all on me,’" Biehl said. "It’s really cool to watch."</p><p>Herbst, too, still has a great deal of respect for the moxie that her opposite number displayed in that showdown, saying she doesn’t think she would have held up nearly as well in such a situation as a sophomore.</p><p>But one of them had to lose.</p><p>"She threw a phenomenal game," Herbst said of Harrison. "It just happened that she threw a phenomenal game when I did too. The odds of us both having that good of a game at the same time were so low.</p><p>"She didn’t do anything wrong. Walking me (in the 11th) was probably smart; I think I hit a double off of her the time before that, so I probably would have walked me too. If she had hit a double off me, I would have walked her too, and the situation may have been reversed. She threw a great game, and I think all the cards were in our deck and everything fell our way the entire state tournament."</p><p>Even after completing an epic championship run that saw her go her final 80 innings without allowing an earned run, Herbst considered that game her most stressful of the tournament with the exception of the state title win over Leo, which was also a 1-0 affair.</p><p>Harrison doesn’t look back on the game quite as romantically, for obvious reasons.</p><p>She does, however, feel that the Grizzly Cubs can carry over the momentum and confidence that game inspired and carry it into 2021. Having lost her junior season, Harrison is even more eager to lead Franklin to the promised land as a senior — and with a lot of talented underclassmen returning to help her out, she’s hopeful that she and the Grizzly Cubs can make the same type of tournament run that Herbst and the Trojans made after surviving that sectional battle a year ago.</p><p>"Next year’s definitely going to be go time for me," Harrison said.</p><p>Both teams, though, lament the missed opportunity to run the classic matchup back this spring. Even with Herbst and All-State infielder Piper Belden having moved on, Center Grove was expected to be among the state’s top teams once again — and Franklin was shaping up as a worthy challenger to the Trojans’ local supremacy.</p><p>Fair, whose clutch hit ended the last meeting, was eager for a potential rematch.</p><p>"It would have been a great game," she said, "and I don’t know how it would have ended."</p>
