Panther girls rally late

Nevaeh Randall is not only Creston’s all-time home run hitter, she showed Monday afternoon that she also has a flair for the dramatic.

After Knoxville cancelled its game scheduled for Monday against Creston, Panther coach Dave Hartman and the athletic administration sought another opponent to stay sharp for regional play later this week. Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton, in the midst of a 20-3 season with similarly high hopes for postseason play, agreed to visit Panther Field for an 11 a.m. varsity game.

Eighth-grade pitcher Riley Miller, with 140 strikeouts for the season and a 1.34 earned run average, had held the Panthers in check on three hits and one run as the Spartans held on to a 2-1 lead in the seventh inning. Taryn Fredrickson had relieved starter Keely Coen for Creston in the third inning.

After Miller got the first two outs of the seventh inning on groundouts, Randall stepped into the batter’s box and quickly faced an 0-2 count. In prior at-bats, Randall had struck out looking, flown out and was hit by a pitch. Miller needed just one more strike to complete the road victory over a Class 4A team with a 22-10 record.

“She went to two strikes and then, BOOM!” Hartman said. “With Nevaeh, what can you say? I mean, sooner or later, she’s going to get you.”

The “boom” was a towering flyball that cleared the left field fence for a game-tying solo home run. The teams went into the eighth inning tied at 2-2. The earlier run came on Jacy Kralik’s single in the fifth inning that chased home Mila Kuhns, who had drawn a walk on a 3-2 count.

Randall now has 21 homers this season and 47 for her career, both school records.

With Exira-EHK facing a regional game Wednesday against Audubon, coach Andrea Schwery opted to relieve Miller with another eighth-grade hurler, Taryn Petersen, in the eighth inning.

Fredrickson had retired the Spartans in the top of the eighth on three infield outs, including two plays by Randall at shortstop.

Jersey Foote stroked a leadoff double for Creston in the bottom of the eighth. After Kuhns popped out, Sophie Hagle was hit by a Petersen pitch and Kralik beat out an infield hit as the fielder momentarily tried unsuccessfully to tag Foote running from second.

With the bases loaded, Zoey Vandevender was hit by a pitch to send Foote home with the winning run. The winning 3-2 margin was Creston’s only lead of the game.

“Some little things made a big difference there for us,” Hartman said. “Jacy came through, and Jersey did a great job on the bases by getting out of the way of the third baseman fielding the ball. That allowed Jacy to beat it out.”

Hartman said he had also been preaching to the team recently to not jump out of the way of inside pitches, teaching them how to turn their body and stay in the batter’s box. Four Panthers reached base Monday on pitches that hit them.

“We talked about how they own the box when they step in,” Hartman said. “If they (opposing pitchers) leave it inside we are getting on base. If we are going to win a big game and be up on the plate, we’re not going to give them that (space). That was big today.”

For the game, Kralik had two hits and an RBI. Daile Keeler and Hagle had singles and Foote hit the eighth-inning double to spark the winning rally. It wasn’t a huge offensive performance, but timely in its production.

“We needed this game because we haven’t seen live pitching for awhile and we don’t have a game until Thursday,” Hartman said. “Their pitcher was really good and threw a good game.”

For Creston, Coen pitched the first two innings and allowed three hits, two runs (one earned) with two strikeouts and no walks. Fredrickson went six innings with just one hit allowed, seven strikeouts and two walks.

“Both of our pitchers did a good job,” Hartman said. “Taryn was shutting them down, but if the game was going to go much longer we were prepared to bring Keely back in. This game gave us a lot of situations that we can learn from.”

The Panthers open Class 4A Region 4 play at home Thursday against Lewis Central (15-17), which finished regular-season play with a14-0 win Monday over Council Bluffs Thomas Jefferson. The Panthers recently swept Lewis Central, 5-4 and 13-4.

Thursday’s winner plays Saturday at Winterset (23-12). Both games begin at 7 p.m.