Having already been beaten by Whiteland once, Izzy Harrison was not in the mood to let it happen again.
So when the Warriors loaded the bases with nobody out in the bottom of the fourth inning during the back end of Thursday’s doubleheader at Franklin, Harrison figured it was time to get serious. The senior struck out three hitters in a row to leave the bags full, then held the powerful Whiteland lineup at bay the rest of the way for a 1-0 victory and a twinbill split.
The visiting Warriors took the opener, 3-1, behind a superb pitching performance from Debbie Hill and a clutch two-run single from Halle Nett in the eighth inning.
Whiteland (6-4, 4-2 Mid-State) appeared to be positioning itself for the sweep when it filled up the bases with a pair of walks and a bunt single by Haley Wilkerson leading off the fourth. Harrison, though, mowed through the next three Grizzly Cubs to keep the contest scoreless.
"Honestly, I feel like when I have more pressure on me that I do better," Harrison said.
After escaping from danger, Franklin (6-3, 4-2) took its first and only lead of the day in the top of the fifth. Madison Snyder reached on a one-out single, went to third when Erin Lee reached on an error and then beat the throw home on a sacrifice by Sara Small.
Harrison took care of the rest, finishing off a one-hit shutout by retiring 12 of the last 13 Warriors she faced.
"I wish we could have had bigger bats," Franklin coach Shelby Biehl said of the day as a whole. "But Izzy did awesome pitching for us and kept us in both of those games, and in the second game we just had one clutch inning where we were able to do something."
Whiteland held a 1-0 lead through much of the opener after scraping an Emma Piercy run together in the top of the second, but Franklin evened it up in the sixth on a solo home run by Maddie Hedges.
After a scoreless seventh, the Warriors broke through against Harrison in the first extra frame. Jordan Smith ripped a triple into right-center field with one out, and Wilkerson reached behind her on a dropped third strike. With two away, Nett hit a hard line drive down the line that caromed off of the third baseman and brought both runners home.
Hill, who struck out 10 while yielding just four hits in the opener, then retired the Grizzly Cubs in order to put the game away. The junior scattered seven hits over 15 innings on the evening overall, fanning 18 and walking just one.
"It’s a little hard trying to push through it all," Hill said of a long day in the pitching circle, "but I just had to have the right mental toughness and know that my teammates have my back through it all."
Harrison finished with 23 strikeouts for Franklin, 14 of those in the first game.
Whiteland had been scoring runs in bunches coming in, totaling 84 in its first eight games, but it gained some confidence from being able to go toe-to-toe with one of the state’s top pitchers in a pair of low-scoring battles.
"It’s huge," Warriors coach Katie Mitchell said. "And they’re a team that we see quite often, and so all of those things are important pieces of the mental game that goes along with playing a team multiple times in a season."
