WAYNESVILLE — Senior Isabelle ‘Izzy’ Holp got four hits in four at bats Monday with a double and three singles, scored three runs and drove in two more to help lead No. 6 seed Brookville to a 17-0 victory over No. 1 seed Waynesville in the sectional final in the upper bracket of the Division III, Southwest II sectional.
The victory avenged two regular season losses to the Lady Spartans, who defeated Brookville 7-1 on April 10 and 5-4 on April 12.
Pitcher Grace Burton, a junior, limited Waynesville to just one hit – a double by Katelynn Eckley in the bottom of the second inning.
On the other hand, the Lady Blue Devils were swinging hot bats generating 17 hits with senior players accounting for 12 of the 17 hits.
In addition to Holp’s four hits, Melina Davidson went three for five, stole a base and scored three runs. Kara Gardner went two for five and scored three times. Makenzie Roesser went two for two with a walk, scored twice and drove in two runs. Melina Lucente went one for three with a double and three RBIs.
Burton pitched five innings, allowed one hit, walked two and struck out four. She also went one for four with a double, drew a walk and drove in two runs.
“Both sides of the ball we came ready to play,” said Brookville coach Mike Gardner. “Grace pitched a great game. We hit a lot of line drives. I think we had 11 line drives out of our 17 hits. We wanted to keep the ball away from Kylie Bailey at shortstop and we mainly did that.”
When asked how Burton managed to limit Waynesville to only one hit after surrendering eight in the first game against Waynesville and nine the second time the two teams faced each other in the regular season, he credited it to charting the pitches thrown in both of those games and then establishing a plan on how to pitch to each Spartan batter.
“We charted every single pitch we threw to every single batter every game, so at some point you have some data to work with,” Gardner said. “We put together a game plan and executed that game plan and it happened to work out for us. Grace hits her spots and you can’t ask for much more than that at the high school level for a pitcher to hit her spots over and over again.”
Other non-senior players that contributed to the win were freshman Rylan Eagle, two for three with a double, two runs and two RBIs; sophomore Mya Haydon, one for two with two walks, one run and one RBI; junior Jordan Oliver, one for four with two RBIs.
Reach Ron Nunnari at (937) 684-9124 or email [email protected].
