Greenville pinch-runner Payton Fourman slides safely home as the throw reaches Troy catcher Amayah Kennedy. Caliegh Stebbins also scored on the infield hit by Lily Brubaker. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Julie Wright-Daniel)
The Lady Wave way of playing fundamentally sound and opportunistic softball carried it to a 16th league title under head coach Jerrod Newland and a sixth straight since the Miami Valley League got back together for the sport.
Troy, OH – The big, brown cardboard box hid a supply of red T-shirts proclaiming the Greenville softball team as Miami Valley League champions.
A banner won’t be next. Never is.
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What’s the point when you’ve won 16 league titles since Jerrod Newland became head coach in 2003. Sixteen green and white banners along the Lady Wave Stadium fence would be an impressive display, but it would be redundant.
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Redundancy, however, can be necessary, a difference maker, a winning formula. That’s what Lady Wave softball is again. And just like the redundancies built into computer networks to minimize hardware failures, power outages and cyberattacks, Newland’s team avoids being taken offline by repeatedly executing the correct plays.
Newland’s team played nearly flawless and opportunistic again Monday in a 6-0 victory over Troy, blanking the Trojans for the second time in four days, to win a sixth straight MVL crown since the league started playing softball in 2021.
The game pitted top 10 teams in the state and vibed with a district final or regional tournament atmosphere. And when it ended on a routine ground ball to second baseman Lily Brubaker, the man in charge of the box carried it to left field. The players plundered the cardboard, put the shirts on over their jerseys and posed for pictures.
“It’s district atmosphere this week for me,” Newland said. “You saw our superintendent, our principal and our mayor in the picture with shirts on. That’s awesome. Love it. Can’t wait for the postseason.”
Appropriately, every player signed the box before the game because Newland coaches a game that relies on everyone to do every job from the flashy to the sacrificial. It’s their signature style.
Yes, the Lady Wave rolls with pitching and run-producing stars Ella Oswalt and Lizzie Shaffer. But when a team must overcome previously unbeaten Troy twice this late in the season, it requires the entire team to crest. That’s what happened in both wins with contributions from all over the lineup, all over the field and off the bench.
Ella Oswalt singled home Greenville’s final run in the seventh inning to provide a little insurance she wouldn’t need.
“That’s team softball, that’s lady Wave softball – it’s every day,” Newland said. “Our four hitter sacrifice bunts, our best hitter sacrifice bunts, it doesn’t matter what your name is, where you’re at. We’re doing things for the name on the front.”
After scoring five unearned runs in Friday’s 5-0 victory at home, Greenville scored four unearned runs Monday.
“They know how to win, and it’s hard to beat a team like that,” said Troy coach Scott Beeler, whose team hadn’t lost until falling to the Lady Wave on Friday. “You’ve got to play clean ball against them. You’ve got to play error free, and you got to try and make some things happen when you’re on offense.”
The Troy errors helped for sure, but for the lead to grow, the Lady Wave needed to execute situational plays.
In the middle of building a 3-0 lead, eighth-place hitter Kara Blumenstock executed two sacrifice bunts. Each time the moved-up runner eventually scored. The first one came when Brubaker scored on a throwing error off the bat of leadoff hitter Leah Force. Instead of the inning being over with no runs, Force stole second, went to third on a throwing error and scored on another throwing error on the same play for a 2-0 lead.
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Brubaker dropped a single into shallow right with one out in the fifth. Blumenstock bunter her to second, and Hallee Fourman blooped a single to right for a three-run lead.
As much as softball teams bunt, Blumenstock’s were her first of the season. The situation hadn’t come up before.
Ella Oswalt threw a one-hitter on the heels of her Friday no-hitter against the top hitting team in the MVL.
“You just have to have confidence in yourself to be able to put it down,” Blumenstock said. “Yes, it’s a very stressful situation, but we work on it all the time, so it just gets easier.”
Cleanup hitter Jordyn McMullen, the team’s freshman catcher, sacrificed in the sixth to help set up Brubaker’s two-run single – a smash off the glove of diving second baseman Alexis Ater that stayed in the infield – for a 5-0 lead, scoring speedy pinch runners Caleigh Stebbins and Payton Fourman. In the seventh, Force bunted Hallee Fourman, who had doubled, to third. And Oswalt singled her home.
“It’s fun that you never know what’s going to happen,” Oswalt said. “You never know who’s going to have to bunt. You never know who’s going to hit a double off the fence because everyone works on the same exact stuff in practice. So it makes the game fun. It makes it loose.”
The four bunts and the five hits that produced the runs were more than Oswalt needed again. On Friday she no-hit the Trojans and struck out 16. On Monday she allowed one hit, a bunt single by Emily May, walked one and struck out nine. The hit broke a no-hit streak of 9 2/3 innings against Troy.
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“Honestly, no, I didn’t feel as sharp today,” Oswalt said. “I feel like I had to move the ball a lot more. And I knew going in that these hitters have seen me three, four times throughout the lineup, and I knew I was going to have to trust my defense, and my defense did their job.”
Blumenstock made two running catches in right field and made the play of the game in the sixth when she robbed Amayah Kennedy of a hit that might have produced a run with a diving catch.
Greenville’s Kendall Cromwell is safe at third after Lily Brubaker’s infield single plated two runs in the sixth inning Monday in Troy.
“I saw it coming at me, and I thought it was gonna drop,” Blumenstock said. “But it just kept carrying, and then I just dove and caught it.”
Newland didn’t disagree with Oswalt’s self-assessment, but he saw his sophomore still pitch two shutouts, allow one hit and strike out 25 in 14 innings.
“She threw an A-minus game, they had two baserunners and one hit and they didn’t score,” he said. “If she throws a C game, we’re going to win. She’s the best player I’ll probably ever coach.”
Oswalt’s changeup, playing off her elite fastball velocity and curveball, was unhittable Friday. She went to it less Monday, perhaps by design, but her first five strikeouts were looking.
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“From what I hear from my girls, she’s got good movement, she’s got good speed, her changeup is a lot better this year,” Beeler said. “Ella’s just a great pitcher. She’s going to go on and do great things. I wish her nothing but success.”
Postseason success awaits both teams. Newland is convinced of it, convinced his team will make it back to the state semifinals in Akron for the first time since 2023 in Division III and that Troy, in Division II, will go for the first time. Greenville (22-1, 16-0) is ranked No. 2 in the state coaches poll, and Troy (21-2, 14-2) is No. 8.
Freshman Reese Campbell is half of Troy’s one-two pitching punch.
“Going into tournament you’re facing teams who want it just as bad as you do,” Oswalt said. “They want to go state. We want to go to state. So having a team over here who really, really wanted to beat us, and they were going to give us their A game no matter what, helps a lot.”
The big crowd, the big win, even the T-shirts, had Newland hyped for the idea that two MVL teams could have a special month ahead.
“Both teams are going to Akron,” he said. “Great crowd here at Troy, great program, great kids, great team. Love everything about them. I root for every game except when they play us.”
Troy didn’t show it’s prolific offense against Oswalt, but no one else has either. The Trojans lead the MVL with a .464 batting average, 40 points better than Greenville. The Trojans have scored 252 runs, the Lady Wave 253. Both teams hit for power. Both have strong pitching. Oswalt and Shaffer for Greenville, Julia Rose and Reese Campbell for Troy.
Campbell started Monday and allowed four hits, three walks and two earned runs. Rose finished. They pitched in reverse order Friday. As Newland says, Troy has the right stuff to go far with pitching, hitting and shortstop Mimi Shaw and second baseman Ater up the middle.
Pitcher Julia Rose is one of seven seniors Troy head coach Scott Beeler hopes gets to finish their careers in Akron.
Beeler wants his seven seniors to go out with a trip to Akron. He expects these two losses to help prepare his team for the tournament and a potential showdown with No. 7 Kings in regionals. But he knows they can’t show up to big games and make mistakes like they did against Greenville.
“It’s tough for me as a coach because I feel like I’m doing something to fail the girls, that I’m not getting them prepared, getting them ready to play,” Beeler said. “They all work hard, they all deserve a chance to be MVL champs, and I do everything I can in the offseason, during the season, to get them ready for these two games.”
Beeler said it’s not just that, though, because he knows Greenville had plenty to do with his team falling short.
“I give Greenville props,” he said. “They’re a really good team. They know how to put the bat on the ball when they need to make things happen. They force you to try and make plays. And they’re looking for you to make mistakes. They made it happen tonight.”
As Newland says, “That’s Lady Wave softball.”
And that’s how you get a T-shirt.
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