Sports

Super Sioux head to state

By Matthew Semisch

05/27/2014

MINOT - Coming into this year’s NDHSAA Class B West Region softball tournament, the odds were stacked against the Westhope-Newburg-Bottineau co-op team.

The top teams heading into the postseason received byes in the play-in round. The Sioux weren’t among them, which meant they had to play in a qualifying stage just to advance to the full bracket phase of the tournament.

It was in that play-in game in Bottineau on May 16, though, that W-N-B was able to tick the first box on its postseason checklist. The Sioux used hot bats and 16 strikeouts from pitcher Samantha Colman to come away with a 9-2 win against Des-Lacs Burlington/Lewis & Clark.

Three wins later, the underdog Sioux found themselves West Region champions for the first time in the co-op softball team’s history.

“It’s been something we’ve had our eyes on all season and even before we played our first game,” W-N-B head coach Layne Fluhrer said. “State was our goal for this year, but we’d made it clear at the beginning of the season that we weren’t going to be satisfied with just getting there.

“We had planned to not only get there but then also try and win the whole thing, and we’re going to do everything we can to do that.”

After that 9-2 win over the Lakers, W-N-B’s road to the state tournament then took the Sioux to Minot for the West Region tourney’s first round proper. It was there that the Sioux quickly learned that heightened success wouldn’t come easily.

The Sioux’s next win wasn’t a breeze, and neither was the one after that. The Sioux played twice Monday, May 19 at Minot’s South Hill Softball Complex, and W-N-B was made to survive two very close back-to-back games.

SIOUX DOWN STANLEY

The day started brightly for the No. 4-ranked Sioux, who jumped out to a 4- 0 lead in the top of the first inning against Stanley, the top seed in the tournament.

W-N-B third baseman Jacie Ceglowski led off the de facto visitors with a base hit. Things soon got even better as the Sioux batted around their lineup in the opening half and center fielder Molly Lodoen, Colman, designated hitter Sydney Arntzen and shortstop Amber Hall all scored before the Blue Jays first got to bat.

Stanley clawed its way back into the game with one run scored in the bottom of the first inning and two in the second half of the third after Sioux second baseman Maddy Lodoen had scored in the top of the third frame to extend W-N-B’s lead at the time to 5-1.

The Blue Jays then tied the game at 5-5 in the bottom of the fourth with another pair of runs. That’s all the damage Stanley’s bats would do, though, and when Hall later scored her second run of the game in the top of the seventh inning, it stood up as the game-winner in a 6-5 Sioux win over the tournament favorites.

W-N-B bumped its record on the season to 10-7 with the win against Stanley, but life evidently hadn’t yet given the Sioux enough exciteement for one day.

TWO TEAMS, 27 RUNS, ONE WINNER

After posting Stanley’s first loss in the double-elimination competition, W-N-B faced Watford City later that day. The Sioux were victorious again after coming away on the right side of a 14-13 slugfest.

 Whereas W-N-B had taken the upper hand early against Stanley and ended up never trailing, Watford City took control early on. After getting out of the top of the first inning with one base hit conceded but no real harm done, the Wolves took a 3-0 lead in the bottom half of that frame before extending their lead to 4-0 in the second.

Ceglowski then scored the Sioux’s first run of the game in the top of the third inning. However, if there were any neutral fans in the South Hill stands for that contest, the real fun for them started in the fourth inning.

W-N-B batted around in the top of the fourth stanza and scored nine runs to jump into a 10-4 lead.

That big lead was fleeting, though, as Watford City quickly struck back with five runs in the bottom half of that same inning to cut W-N-B’s lead to 10-9.

After both teams went quietly in the fifth frame, the Sioux’s offense heated up again in the top half of the sixth. Arntzen, center fielder Paige Vad, left fielder Ashlyn Huber and Ceglowski all scored in that inning to boost the underdogs’ lead to 14-9.

The Wolves then pushed four runs across in the bottom half of that same inning to cut the Sioux’s lead back to just one.

However, although W-N-B couldn’t add any insurance runs in the top of the seventh, Watford City went out 1-2-3 in the bottom half of that frame to give the Sioux the win.

W-N-B’s win in the second game of that doubleheader punched the Sioux’s ticket to the NDHSAA Class B softball state tournament. The top three teams in the East and West Regions advance.

“It feels amazing, and to come join a team like this has just been awesome,” Colman said about her team’s run to the state tournament.

“It’s so great to do what we’ve done here, and I and our whole team have just been working so hard for so long, and the outcome’s making all of that worth it.”

SMOOTHER SAILING

The Sioux then played Watford City again the following day 30 minutes after the Wolves eliminated Stanley from the West Region tournament. However, W-N-B, Stanley and Watford City all qualified for the state tournament by virtue of having finished in the top three at their regional competition.

Ceglowski led off for the Sioux in the regional final by getting hit by a pitch. However, she zoomed around to home plate when Molly Lodoen followed up with a single, and that first run ended up being enough in an eventual 13-0 rout.

Molly Lodoen herself scored to double W-N-B’s lead before the top half of the inning was over, and the Sioux picked up another run in the second from Hall.

It was the third inning, though, that the floodgates well and truly burst open.

Colman opened the top half of the inning with a single, and it wasn’t long before she, too, scored. First baseman Lauren Mach was next up and launched a pitch for a two-run home run to put the game out of the Wolves’ reach.

Fluhrer and Mach had both felt W-N-B’s junior cornerman was in a slump at the plate going into the West Regional tournament.

However, she got better at the dish as the competition went on and ended up responsible for one of the key moments of the championship game.

“It just felt good,” Mach said of her key contribution in the regional final. “I was kind of in a slump before that, so to get over it with a knock like that felt amazing. It’s just a great, great feeling.”

“Lauren had been in what you’d call a hitter’s slump and she had kept trying and trying to get out of it, and today she got her confidence back,” Fluhrer said. “When she’s hitting, we’re a really tough lineup.”

The Sioux’s breakout third inning continued at pace after Mach’s two-run shot. W-N-B batted around its lineup and eventually scored six runs in the frame to boost its lead to an increasingly unassailable 9-0 lead.

Watford City, which later gave up another run in the fourth inning and three more still in the fifth, never got on the scoreboard itself.

After the Wolves were sat down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the fifth inning, the game was called due to the 10-run mercy rule.
After the teams went through the handshake line in the infield, Fluhrer was handed the West Region tournament trophy to share with his players, who gathered in left field to celebrate and take photos.

“Knowing we were already going to state helped,” Colman said, “But we still wanted to push through and be the regional champions, so we came in ready to play today and I think we definitely proved that.”

When asked how his team was able to rout so thoroughly a team it’d had a 14-13 marathon with some 24 hours prior, Fluhrer said he felt his team played a more complete game against the Wolves the second time around.

“Our girls came ready to play today,” Fluhrer said, “and they went out and got what we came here for.”

Not much came easy until the West Region final, though, and that’s what the Sioux had anticipated.

“We knew it was going to be a battle here these couple of days,”
 Fluhrer said. “We knew Watford City and Stanley and Kenmare and that any one of us could beat the other on any given day, and it was just going to come down to whoever got their hitting and pitching going together, and fortunately that ended up being us.”

Mach spoke after the game about what it meant to be a part of the first W-N-B softball team to go to state.

“It’s just so special,” Mach said. “It’s amazing to be a part of this great of a team. It’s just awesome for us as players, for our coaches, for our schools.

“To get this far is just something else.”

BACK TO THE FUTURE

The NDHSAA Class B state softball tournament is set to begin Thursday. It’ll be in a very familiar venue for the Sioux, as South Hill will be the host venue just as it was for the West Region tournament.

W-N-B will open up the tournament at 12 p.m. Thursday against Grafton. Just like the Sioux were in the West, the Spoilers were the No. 4 seed in the East Region tournament but played its way into the state competition.

The Sioux are guaranteed to play at least two games this week in Minot. Win or lose against Grafton, W-N-B will then play again at the South Hill complex at 12 p.m. Friday in either the state semifinal game or in the first round of the consolation bracket.

One way or the other, W-N-B’s second opponent at the state tournament will be either Stanley or Kindred-Richland, the No. 2 seed from the East Region tournament.

Ahead of that first game at state against Grafton, Fluhrer said he and his team set aside a little time to celebrate before preparing to face the Spoilers.

“We’ll celebrate for a couple of days here,” Fluhrer said, “But then we need to get back to work.

“We’ve got a long stretch coming up here with our kids taking their final exams and our need to focus on school first, but come next week, we’ll have to switch our focus more back to the fact that we want to climb to the top of the mountain at state, and we’ve got three steps left.”