Greenville sophomore Ella Oswalt continued her dominant season Thursday to lead the Lady Wave to their 20th shutout. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Julie Wright-Daniel)
To say the Greenville softball team hasn’t had least a little eye the long-term future would be wrong. Their year-long wish comes true Friday when they get a second shot at Western Brown in the Division III regional final.
Pleasant Hill, OH – While everyone associated with Greenville softball quickly found the stack of pizza boxes behind the dugout, a much more important postgame action went unnoticed.
Someone wrapped Ella Oswalt’s valuable right arm in ice.
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She had just thrown 101 pitches, more than her coaches would have liked. But they needed every one of them in a closer-than-expected 3-0 win over Tippecanoe in a Region III semifinal Thursday at Newton High School.
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The ice was necessary because the Lady Wave needs Oswalt’s right arm to recover well and feel fresh Friday. At 5 p.m. she will be in the circle to battle the team the Lady Wave has expected to be in the other dugout since this week a year ago: Western Brown.
Greenville played 31 games to get here and won 30 in a row. They remember what last year’s 6-2 loss to WB felt like in the regional final.
“Western Brown last year was the worst day of my life,” said Oswalt, who was a freshman pitcher in that game and allowed six runs in three innings. “I didn’t get to go to state, and I’ve never wanted something so bad in my life. All I want to do is go to state.”
Next week’s final four berth in Akron will go to a worthy team. Greenville is 30-1 and ranked No. 2 in the state. Western Brown defeated Defiance 5-2 in Thursday’s first semifinal, is 28-3 and ranked No. 3.
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“We all knew all year that it’d the same two teams – it’s lined up, and it’s gonna happen on this field tomorrow, 22 hours from now,” Lady Wave coach Jerrod Newland said minutes after his team survived and advanced.
Freshman catcher Jordyn McMullen didn’t go to last year’s game. She watched it on the Game Changer app. But she’s known all of her teammates longer than just this season because of summer travel ball. She understands what going to state would mean to them, especially seniors Kendall Cromwell and Lily Brubaker.
Greenville’s Kara Blemenstock singles to right to start her team’s three-run fifth-inning that sent them to victory and into Friday’s regional final.
“This means a lot to me because I want to go to state myself, but also I want to give them their opportunity,” McMullen said.
To make it to Akron, Newland knows his team must play much better Friday than it did Thursday.
“We played average today, but bottom line is Ella kept us in it,” he said. “If we play lethargic and not aggressive like that, it’s just not good. We play like we played 28, 29 times this year, we’ll be fine.”
Greenville committed two or three errors depending on who was keeping score. They had only five hits, popped up a lot and put only one rally together with a three-run fifth. But with Oswalt spinning the yellow ball, those three runs were plenty even if the late-in-the-game timing of them created stress.
“It was nerve-wracking … it was,” Oswalt said. “We haven’t had a whole lot of games that have been like this this year, but I had full faith and full trust in my team that they were going to do what they needed to do.”
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If Oswalt, and possibly Lizzie Shaffer, continue to pitch like the have all season, then the Lady Wave will have a chance in every game that remains. They have combined on 20 shoutouts this year and haven’t allowed a run in five tournament games.
“She looked great … she always looks great,” McMullen said of Oswalt. “I like that depending on the team she changes her perspective. A lot of pitchers are, ‘Oh, I just need to pitch it fast.’ But Ella, when she faces certain teams, she knows, ‘Oh, this game is mostly about spin.’”
Jordyn McMullen connects for a double to plate Greenville’s first run.
McMullen said Thursday was a spin game against a young Tipp team that came in with eight wins in its past nine games after a 10-11 start to their season. And because the umpire wasn’t giving Oswalt any wide strikes, she had to rely on hitting precise spots more as the game progressed.
“I realized they’ve seen my speed three times now, and I knew that I was gonna have to spin the ball,” Oswalt said. “I was trying to throw through Jordyn, spin the ball through Jordyn.”
Oswalt struck out eight, walked one and Tipp put only four runners on base. A pair of two-out infield errors gave the Red Devils a chance in the second inning.
In the sixth, Tipp’s Jocelyn Shelton hit a ground ball to Cromwell at third that was a borderline hit or error. Cromwell had to go to the ground to her left to field the ball. She rushed to her feet to make the throw which was in the dirt and got past first baseman Shaffer.
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Hit or error? Cromwell had to make a tough play and Shelton might have beaten a good throw. Regardless, Cromwell was charged with at least a throwing error because Shelton advanced to second on the play.
Greenville scored the entire play an error to credit Oswalt with a no-hitter. Tipp scored it a single. Either way it didn’t matter because the next batter grounded out to end the inning.
For Tipp (18-13) to be in the game was a long way from the 17-1 and 11-4 losses it suffered against Greenville in mid-April.
Greenville pinch runner Payton Fourman scores on a sacrifice fly by Hallee Fourman for the second run of the fifth inning.
“These last three weeks, they’ve allowed us to really coach them up, and we have expectations for our kids,” said Tipp coach Charles Tackett who just completed the second season of his second tour leading the program. “We made some defensive changes, and we did some things different, and put some kids in spots, and they flourished, and we got better.
“We played these guys twice, and it’s always hard to beat somebody three times. So we knew that we had a shot.”
For four innings, Tipp senior Jaina Drum held the Lady Wave to a lone single by Brubaker to lead off the second. Otherwise, she struck out three and induced popups, groundouts and one hard line drive to the third baseman.
“She did great, she hit her spots, she pitched to the defense,” Tackett said.
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Finally, in the fifth, Greenville’s bats made something happen. With one out, Kara Blumenstock blooped a single over the first baseman’s head. Then Drum walked Rielynn Davidson. McMullen was next and laced a 3-2 pitch to the fence in center field for an RBI double to break the ice.
“It’s a lot harder to prove yourself as a freshman, especially because you’re so much younger than everyone else, but I just knew that we needed a run,” McMullen said.
Tippecane centrfielder Jocelyn Shelton runs down a fly ball in support of pitcher Jaina Drum, who held the Lady Wave to five hits.
So she took the mature approach of a much more experienced player.
“I’ve already seen this pitcher three times, and we backed up in the box,” she explained. “I got a three-two count, and, especially as a catcher, it’s easier to know where the pitch is going to come. I know she’s going to pitch me a strike, but since I’m still technically down on the count, she’s going to try to give it more outside. I just waited on it, and a lot of times, like everyone else, I want to hit a home run. But I just knew I needed to get a hit, and so I just looked to make contact.”
Hallee Fourman, another freshman, followed with a sacrifice fly for a 2-0 lead. Then with leadoff hitter Leah Force up, Newland called for the squeeze bunt with two outs.
Greenville second baseman Lily Brubaker catches a popup in the third inning.
“We just gotta make something happen,” he said. “And the coaches all game had been yelling at me bunt the ball, bunt the ball.”
Force pushed the bunt into the air and over the pitcher’s head. By the time a fielder got to the ball, Force was safe at first and the third run scored.
“That doesn’t happen very often, but with two outs in that situation, I just had a good feeling with how they were playing the defense that something could happen,” Newland said. “It works one out 10 times, but it worked, made us look good.”
Despite the earlier convincing wins over Tipp, Newland wasn’t surprised that Tipp had improved or that the game was close.
“Good team, they made every play, they didn’t have an error,” he said. “The wind sucked today. It’s a terrible hitter’s day. It’s regional softball.”
Yes, it’s regional softball and Newland takes nothing for granted. Friday will be his 12th regional final appearance in 23 years. He’s won four times. Before Thursday’s semifinal, at his desk, he wrote down a score prediction.
“I wrote four zip,” he said. “You can go take picture right now. Literally, it says four nothing.”
What about a prediction for Western Brown?
Newland rolled his lips together and said nothing. He figured he had about 18 hours to make that prediction and keep it to himself.
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