Jacqueline Kadel has handled nearly all Miami East’s pitching duties for the last three season, totaling 422 innings in 74 appearances. This season she lapped the field in the TRC in ERA (1.371) and WHIP (0.973), recorded nine shutouts and 232 strikeouts. (Press Pros Feature Photos By Logan Howard)
Miami East’s season spiraled to an end as Liberty Union scored 15 runs in the fourth and fifth innings of the regional semifinals.
Centerville, Oh – The big inning kills. Big innings, plural, massacre.
Alan Brads is a contributing columnist and writes sports at large for Press Pros Magazine.
Miami East’s tournament run fell victim to a pair of base parades in the fourth and fifth innings against reigning D-III state champion Liberty Union in the regional semifinals.
Liberty Union scored six runs in the fourth, then set the Vikings home early, 16-3, with a nine-run bottom of the fifth, capped by a walk-off run-rule grand slam.
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Therein lies the value of having producers in spots one through nine, or as Coach Shaun Hochradel pointed out, one through 10.
“I bring a sub (Ryleigh Brown) in the DP spot and she hits a three-run double,” Hochradel said.
At regionals, every team has good pitching, though many not as good as Miami East’s Jacqueline Kadel, nor Liberty Union’s Suzie Shultz. Every team has show-stoppers at the top of the lineup.
But not every team can roll through the lineup dealing damage from any given spot, or in Liberty Union’s case, every given spot.
If the big inning kills, a deep lineup is the murder weapon more often than not.
Jaila Thurman short attempts to get the runner going to first.
Take the bottom of the fifth for example. Trailing 12-3 with a runner on third, Miami East knew its season would end via run rule unless the Vikings recorded two outs while holding the runner at bay. So they intentionally walked Shultz, who had hit a three-run homer to straightaway center field an inning ago. Then they intentionally walked Emmalee Putnam, whose leadoff single in the second became the first run of the game. The intentional walks served a dual purpose: to threaten the double play at any base, and to pass over the dangerous third and fourth batters.
So up stepped freshman second baseman Eden Wilson to the plate. A deep fly ball would’ve done the job, but Wilson went the extra mile, and plastered a pitch over the left center field fence.
“One through nine, they’ve got girls that can hit,” Miami East Coach Brian Kadel said. “There are no easy outs. It’s tough to constantly make plays and make pitches.”
The six-run fourth inning was largely the same story. Four out of five batters got aboard in the 5-9 slots of the lineup, then leadoff hitter Payton Hochradel blasted a two-RBI double, and Shultz cleared the basepaths with her home run.
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Liberty Union (27-1) earned a berth to the regional finals on Friday against Shawnee (25-3), which has invoked the run rule in each of its last nine games.
“One of the things we don’t talk about is Akron,” Coach Hochradel said. “As soon as we get on the bus ride home, we’ll start looking at Shawnee.”
Miami East (24-4) set a team record for wins in a season and captured its fourth straight TRC title, this time with a perfect 11-0 league record.
Jacqueline Kadel batted in 1 run in the 5th.
“The girls have done phenomenally growing every year,” Kadel said. “We started the season 0-2 this year, and graduated a lot of girls last year. And people thought we might not do as well this year. I’m proud of the way they came together and battled. They set a school record for wins, won a fourth straight conference title and fourth straight district title. There’s a lot to be proud of. Hopefully tomorrow they’ll feel better about that.”
The Vikings graduate Jacqueline Kadel, Alli Rose and Lilli Forsythe.
“Alli’s kinda like the team mom for everybody,” Kadel said. “She keeps them up and keeps them focused and does a great job out there on defense. Jacqualine has held us down on the mound for the last three years and has done a lot for this program as far as being a leader and getting the other girls motivated and working hard, but also carrying us through a lot of games. Without them, we don’t have the opportunity to do the stuff we’ve done.”
Kadel has handled nearly all Miami East’s pitching duties for the last three season, totaling 422 innings in 74 appearances. This season she lapped the field in the TRC in ERA (1.371) and WHIP (0.973), recorded nine shutouts and 232 strikeouts. She earned first-team all-district and second-team all-state honors last season, and will likely win much of the same hardware this year when those teams are announced.
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But against Liberty Union, it just wasn’t her day.
She started well, striking out the first two batters, and catching a lazy pop-up from the third.
In the second, a trifecta of singles loaded the bases with no outs, but she fought back, and escaped with only one run crossing the plate. She struck out two in the scoreless third while knowing her team was being no-hit and there was no sign of any help on the way.
Whitni Enis throws from right field to make the out at first.
As strong as she was through three innings, Shultz was even better on the mound on the other side. The 2024 all-state pitcher no-hit the Vikings through four innings, allowing just one baserunner in that time on a walk. Shultz struck out 10 batters in five innings, allowing all three of her hits during the fifth inning, when Miami East sparked a mini rally, closing the gap to 7-3.
“We weren’t really worried about the slow start,” Coach Kadel said. “We’ve had those before, and we were able to start putting something together there. But on the defensive side we just didn’t have our best day.”
The third and fourth times through the lineup proved too much to handle for Jacqueline Kadel, allowing 15 runs in her final two innings of work.
“I’ll be honest,” Hochradel said. “That first inning, we walked over here, and I’m like, ‘she doesn’t look like the same girl.’ She looked muscular and she threw harder, I thought … We were like ‘ooh man she’s gotten better than what we saw last year.’”
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But after the initial shock and a handful of late swings, the Lions recalibrated.
“Bad teams never make adjustments,” Hochradel said. “Good teams make adjustments game to game. Great teams make adjustments during games. Our first two batters struck out, then our three-hole hitter hit a soft ball back to Jacqueline. Then we relay all that information. ‘What pitches are you seeing? How are things going? What’s going on? Where’s she working you?’ You just start building information. That way, your second at bat, you’re already better than your first.”
Multiply that edge by nine – scratch that – 10 productive hitters, and that’s a team that can make a run as deep as its lineup.
Kylie Gentis singles in the 5th.
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