Softball season ends at Super Regional

The Comanche softball team was three outs away from advancing to the state tournament, but Kiefer rallied in their last at-bat in the final game to end the Lady Indians’ season at the Super Regional.

Comanche had broken a 2-2 tie in the top of the seventh when Addison Downey lined a single to center field to score Jaylee Roebuck. Comanche had chances to score more but a fly out to the shortstop and a pop out to the first baseman left the bases loaded.

It left the door open for the Lady Trojans in the bottom half of the seventh and they took full advantage. An intentional walk sandwiched between singles loaded the bases for Kiefer. The next batter doubled in two runs to end the game.

“Obviously, we would have liked to have a win, but I thought the girls played well and handled the pressure,” said Jen White, head coach. “If you watch the games, they are really good games back and forth. We only lost by one. It’d be nice to have a key hit sometimes when we had people on that would have helped and stuff like that.”

Comanche only lost by one run in each of their two losses in the best-of-three series. The Lady Indians went to Kiefer as underdogs to the fifth-ranked team in Class 3A. They won the first game, 4-2, on Wednesday before Kiefer answered with a 3-2 win in the second game to keep the series alive and then finish off the comeback on Thursday.

“I think we were pretty evenly matched,” White said. “I knew it was going to be a dogfight to get out of it. We performed well, we just didn’t get those little key things that we needed every now and then.”

It was the first year as the head coach for White, who was hired shortly before the season started and had to play catch up to get her team ready for the season. They finished 21-13 overall.

“There’s some things I would like to have done differently when I first got here, but just getting back into coaching, you realize, I should have done that, I should have done this, but I think overall, I think it was a great first year for sure. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get our numbers up and we’re going to start slow pitch for the junior high to get them interested and going. So, hopefully, we’ll be a little bit ahead of the game next year instead of just walking into it.”

In game one, Comanche pitcher Josey Harris allowed two runs in the first inning but Kiefer wouldn’t score again as the Lady Indians rallied for the win.

Trailing 2-1 in the fifth inning, Bre Gill and Mykayla Slovak singled to drive in two runs and give the Lady Indians a lead they would keep.

In game two, Comanche trailed 3-0 going into the final inning. The Lady Indians fought back to scored on a two-run single by Caity Ramsey, but the game ended with the tying run on second base.