2014 Northwest Indiana Top-5 Week-8 (Final) High School 'Renegade' Poll — and a look ahead to 2015 6-18-2014
	A USA-365.com Special Report by Mark Smith

Crown Point seniors Ally (left) and Amanda Rock helped lead CP to a 29-1 record, plus 4A sectional and regional titles in 2014.  (Photo by Mark Smith)

CROWN POINT (6-18-2014) In Northwest Indiana, we found out that no matter how dominant you are during the regular season, you can quickly and quietly be denied a trip to the state finals once the single-elimination playoffs begin.

Crown Point was 29-0 until they ran into a hot pitcher, Huntington North's Erin Rethlake, in a 2-0 semistate loss. Hanover Central was 29-4 when they met up with Leo's Lindsey Bowers who shut them out 3-0 and then shut out everybody on the way to Leo's first state title.

Everybody that wins the regional thinks they're going to the state finals and very few do. It almost has nothing to do with the quality of$ the teams. When you play seven-inning games against a team and pitcher you've never seen with the pressure of reaching the state finals on the table, it's easy to get shut out very quickly in a game with less highlights than a 0-0 World Cup scoreless tie.

Many times we judge results with a 'football mentality,' where 50 boys run into 50 boys and the best side always wins.
Plus, fans in Northwest Indiana in all sports are notoriously ignorant about other parts of the state. They don't know that everybody has good players.

There's a sophomore at Clinton Prairie who hit 14 home runs and walked 27 times in 30 games this season. Junior left-handed Josie Wood at North Miami was 22-1, struck 278 in 133 innings, including 17 in 10 innings in the state title game. Up here, we don't know and don't care. Our kids should 'win state,' we say, and if they don't it's their own fault. It's not that easy.

With no NWI team reaching even the semistate title game, the season becomes difficult to evaluate. To be fair, the structure of softball has changed. Before 1998, regionals and semistates were both four-team, three-game tournaments. For a few years in the last decade, there was no semistate and the state finals were two-day, three game events. Now the regional has been marginalized, being converted to a one-game school night, home site event. So winning the regional and the semistate has vastly different weight and meaning depending on when you won it.

The 'answer' probably is: If you won your sectional, the season was a success no matter what your expectations. An athletic season, in my mind, can be a success and a disappointment at the same time.

The 2015 season is very promising with all of the top five teams I'm going to mention returning more than one potential all-area player. Look for Lowell to do well as their junior varsity lost just one game all year. Griffith had just one senior so they will improve. Andrean lost key seniors, but they had a half dozen freshmen contributors who have tons of eligibility left.

I'd still like to see a local team host a major (more than 4 teams) tournament. Highland and Munster formerly had multiple team tourneys and they are good for the sport. A 12-team (let's say CP, LC, Andrean, Hanover, Lowell, Morton, Munster, Highland, Whiting, Noll, Merrillville, Gavit) Lake County championship would only take two days. You could have 'pool play' to give the smaller schools a chance. Travel wouldn't be an issue and it certainly would lift the visibility of the sport. It might even get on local radio — something that doesn't happen for girls softball any more.

You never know what freshmen are coming in where, but the top 2014 teams do not appear to be losing much.

5. (2A) Bishop Noll (22-7)
19-6 (2013), 18-9 (2012), 21-8 (2011), 20-10 (2010)

HAMMOND: Hanover's got almost all their position players coming back for 2015 in the Greater South Shore Conference, but Bishop Noll, which scored 235 runs in 29 games, may have the most complete combination of position players and pitchers coming back. Among others, the Warriors return soph-to-be Brittany Anderson (47 of 92, .500) and 2015 soph pitcher Ashley Gordish (10-4, 1.42, 73 Ks, 21 walks in 89 innings), who pitched and won the sectional and regional title game. Those two should anchor the team for three more seasons. Anderson has already committed to play at James Madison University. Noll lost the semistate 5-3 to eventual state 2A runner-up Southmont, but it appears that only Whiting and Boone Grove can stop them from returning to that level in 2015.