Crown Point girls fall to Riley in regional semifinal, 6-5 to close out season

PENN Regional semifinal (6-7-2003) mostly sunny, 85 degrees

WP  -   Tori Campbell  (12-7)  CG, 2K, 3 walks
LP  -   Lacy Holevis  (10-13)  CG  No. 24   3Ks, 2 walks

Riley (9 single, double, 2-3 steals)
Jenny Swanson (R) 2 singles, walk
Maggie Swanson (R) 2 singles, RBI
Sarah Nagy (R) 2 singles, walk, 2 RBIs
Brianne Wiand (R) Double, 2 RBIs

CROWN POINT (6 singles, double, triple)
Lacy Holevis (CP) Double, 3 RBIs
Ashley Amodeo (CP) 2 singles, sac fly, RBI
Amy Zondor (CP) Triple, walk
Wendy Kurcz (CP) Single, walk

OSCEOLA (6-7-2003) -  Gratefully, Crown Point's girls didn't shed any tears after Saturday's 6-5 loss to Riley in the Penn Class 3 A softball regional. Secretly, I think there was a realization that the season would probably end Saturday once defending state champion Lake Central came through the other half of the bracket, a 2-1 winner over No 7 Mishawaka in the 85-degree day's first semifinal game.

The Bulldogs (16-16) battled to the end and there was a feeling down to junior Kelly Harlow's ground out that CP might still rally as they had three times at the previous week's Merrillville Sectional.

"You can't win 'em all," said retiring coach Chris Pepa, after her last game. "We did have errors but  that's not what cost us the game. They (Riley) just hit better than we did."

Riley got some lucky base hits, some crawlers through the infield. But the winning team usually has all the luck. And Sarah Nagy's two-run single to center that rallied the Wildcats from a 5-4 deficit, was well-hit and CP, with two innings to rally, could not score again, ending the 32-game season at 16-16.

Riley, which lost 7-0 to Lake Central in an uneventful regional title game later, held off Crown Point with the offspeed pitching of sophomore Tori Campbell (12-7). The Bulldogs' inability to adjust to slow pitches, which were only occasionally over the plate, was CP's undoing.

"Yeah, said Pepa, "we tried to adjust in practice yesterday. We brought out a slow pitching machine. But when  I asked them today, they said, 'She's so much slower than the machine.'  We adjusted a little bit but then we got anxious and dropped our shoulders. That's when  you get those little popups."

This was  a very frustrating defeat. Crown Point hit eight pop-ups or fly balls in seven innings. Three of the final five batters hit flyballs to the outfield. Riley centerfielder Beatrice Pedroza made two fine running catches and turned a third quality grab into a double play, doubling Erin Hostinsky off first base in the third inning.

Riley scored three times in the second inning. A big play was Brianne Wiand's slicing, two-run bloop double over Jen McMullin's head on the grass behind first base. Maggie Swanson's infield hit to deep third scored Wiand one out later and made the score 3-1.

Trailing 4-1, CP rallied in the fifth inning. Singles by Hostinsky, Amodeo and a walk to Amy Zondor loaded the bases and a long double by Lacy Holevis tied the score. The 90-100 CP fans that made the two-hour drive to Penn whooped it up, as the Bulldogs had come from three runs behind for the fourth consecutive game.

"Yeah, we knew they'd been coming from behind," said Riley coach Marc Rightley.

McMullin's single and a throwing error by Wiand, Riley's second baseman, gave CP a 5-4 lead.

"We made it interesting," Pepa said. "I knew they weren't going to give up. They gave 100 percent."

"We didn't play great," Rightley said. "We made some mental mistakes. But we came through when we had to. It was back and fourth and the chips fell our way. We knew they'd been coming from behind. When we went ahead 3-1, I was thinking that they were probably saying, 'Whoa, this is where we've been.' But in the same sense, we came back and won in the final inning of our sectional."

Oddly, Rightley would like Campbell to throw harder but she's hooked on the speed. "The problem now is when we go through the order two or three times, they catch up to her," explained Rightley. "But the last couple of innings, she did what she had to do."

Crown Point's first regional appearance in 18 years goes down as a loss and now the program goes into a period of limbo. Seven seniors graduate including both varsity pitchers and both varsity catchers.

Shortstop Mallory Michaels and outfielder Kelly Harlow will return but there aren't enough  people on the varsity bench to replace the nine who are leaving. This will be a totally different team in 2004.

The new coach could lift CP to new heights but that's not a given. The Lady Bulldogs' schedule gets tougher next season with Lake Central joining the Duneland Athletic Conference. One game against 3A state finalist LC becomes two games next year. CP has state finalist Hanover Central on the schedule plus 2A No. 1 Andrean, which will be a dominant team again next year. 

But the team seemed satisfied to be one of four Crown Point spring sports teams (track, baseball and tennis) to win sectional titles. Pepa, who is leaving coaching to pursue a master's degree,  said it was hard to go out this way but the end would have been hard no matter what.

"It's really difficult," she said. "I told them that they beat us on hits and that's part of the game. I told them that I have never been more proud of a bunch of girls than I am of them."

DOG  NOTES:  Mishawaka's Claire DeVreese (18-6) certainly does not throw harder than Lake Central's Brooke Baker (19-2-1) and probably does not throw as hard, although it's close.  In the Lake Central nine-inning 1-0 win over Mishawaka, Baker struck out 21 of the 27 batters she faced. DeVreese gave up just four hits but struck out seven.   Baker walked three hitters but two of them were semi-intentional walks to DeVreese, who batted .409 during the regular season.

Amy Zondor finished her CP athletic career with a triple and a walk in four at-bats. Zondor earned 12 letters at Crown Point, participating in volleyball, basketball and softball for four years. The sectional title was her first.
Jen McMullin, who ended the year batting clean-up after her transfer from Hanover Central last summer, had high hopes for her former team as well.

"I think they'll get to the finals," she said, hours before it happened. "They'll beat Griffith for sure."

There was a a lot of socializing between the Lake Central and Crown Point fans, something that bodes well for next season, when the schools will play two league games.

Crown Point athletic director Jerry Caravana watched CP's 3-2 baseball victory over Valparaiso in Merrillville and then drove to Penn to watch CP's girls against Riley. Caravana, with the help of the nine-inning Lake Central-Mishawaka game, arrived in the second inning.

Crown Point had athletes in four state tournament events Saturday including the girls track finals in Indianapolis and the regional tennis tournament at South Bend Clay.

Penn (3A) Regional
No. 2 Lake Central  1,   No. 7 Mishawaka 0
South Bend Riley  6,  Crown Point  5
Lake Central  7,  South Bend Riley  0  title

DeKalb (3A) Regional
No. 5 Pendleton Heights  5,  Bellmont  3
No. 3 DeKalb  3, (Lafayette) Jefferson  2
No. 5 Pendleton Heights  12, No. 3 DeKalb  0  -  title

2003 (3A) State Softball Finals
at Carmel (Cherry Tree Complex)
June 13 (Fri.) Center Grove (26-6)  vs. (Indianapolis) Cathedral (22-10)  6:30 P.M.
No. 2 Lake Central (30-2-1)  vs, No. 5 Pendleton Heights (28-4)  -  8:30 p.m.
at Carmel (Cherry Tree Complex)
June 14 (Sat.) 3A State title game  (7 p.m.)
at Carmel (Cherry Tree Complex)

IHSAA 2003 Softball Tournament State Finals Pairings
Friday, June 13, Saturday, June 14

Admission: $7 per session; $10 for season ticket.
Class A
June 13 at Hamilton Southeastern
6:30 p.m. – No. 3 Tecumseh (24-4) vs. No. 9 Riverton Parke  (26-3)
8:30 p.m. (approximate) –Whiting (20-9) vs. (Howard County) No. 2 Eastern (27-3) 
June 14 at Carmel
1 p.m. -- Championship game: Friday night winners. 

Class 2A
June 13 at North Central (Indianapolis)
6:30 p.m. – Norwell (19-10)  vs. No. 3 Gibson Southern (25-4)
8:30 p.m. (approximate) – New Palestine (24-8) vs. HANOVER CENTRAL  (25-6)
June 14 at Carmel
4 p.m. -- Championship game: Friday night winners. 

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Revised: June 08, 2004.