Pat Harty

Your Prep Sports

SOLON – Being told to do something, but actually doing it are two entirely different things as the Solon softball team experienced on Monday.

Solon coach Jim White told his players before their Class 3A regional final against ninth-ranked Albia to be patient at the plate against Albia freshman pitcher Jena Lawrence, who relies heavily on a deceptive drop ball.

White kept saying the same thing during the game, but it didn’t work as Lawrence used her drop ball to frustrate the Solon batters during an 11-3 victory at Solon.

Lawrence scattered seven hits and had eight strikeouts while going the distance on the mound. She fielded a grounder hit by Solon catcher Jess Heick and threw to first base for the final out, which triggered a wild celebration by the Albia players on the field.

The victory clinched a trip to the state tournament for Albia and improved its record to 28-8, while Solon finished the season at 30-13.

This marks the first time in five seasons under White that Solon failed to make the state tournament. The Spartans won the Class 3A state title in 2015 and finished third last season.”

“I thought they were the second most talented team in our bracket in Class 3A when she’s on,” White said of Albia and of Lawrence, who improved her record to 20-7 on the mound this season. “Now with that being said, we like hitting, but we were just way too aggressive on that low pitch. We hit her up pitch really well and the change didn’t bother us.

“So if we could have adjusted to that and found a way. And I honestly, you can’t change the course of a game, but let’s say we were in a zero-zero game, I think we make that adjustment better.”

Solon was in a 0-0 game until Albia scored four runs in the third inning. Freshman catcher Alex Beard cleared the bases with a double and then scored on a sacrifice fly to center field, extending the lead to 4-0.

Solon also committed two of its four errors during the third inning.

The Spartans answered with two runs in the bottom of the fourth to slice the deficit in half. But Albia responded with one run in the fifth, another in the sixth and then five in the seventh to put the game away.

“We needed to stay close,” White said. “These kids worked extremely hard. I really think our emotions got the best of us in the sixth and seventh. Things snowballed.

“I still felt we could score off her if we could’ve just had some plate discipline. I mean the ball was moving a ton. Our plan was to take that pitch and they just didn’t recognize it.”

Lawrence enticed many of the Solon batters to swing at pitches that were out of the strike zone.

“The first inning, he called a couple of them strikes, but then after that, I think we probably took three that were called strikes,” White said of the home plate umpire. “Everything else we were chasing it. And she’s got some really nice pitches. She just stayed with that pitch. I’m not so sure how many of them were strikes, but it was tough for us to see it and recognize it.

“So we moved around in the box quite a bit and I thought we had some opportunities there. And once it got to 4-2 we felt pretty good. And I think once we got beyond that, I saw our emotions get the best of us. So that was disappointing.”

White would’ve liked his team’s chances if Solon had just been able to consistently put the ball in play, but it didn’t happen.

“I talked earlier about what a tough draw this was, but I really thought we could take advantage of a lot of things,” White said. “But putting the ball in play had to be one of them. There was a lot of things that we could have done there.”

Albia’s seventh, eighth and ninth batters in the lineup each scored at least one run. Abbie Martin scored two runs and belted a two-run home run from her eighth spot in the order in the five-run seventh inning.

The Solon pitchers also combined to walk six batters.

“They had some timely hits,” White said of Albia. “If you look at those first five innings, us giving those base runners at the bottom on base for the top three really hurt us. Those top three are really, really good.”

Solon had performed well on defense in recent games after struggling for much of the season. The problems on defense resurfaced in Monday’s loss.

“Over the last 10 days that was uncharacteristic, but that’s who we’ve been most of the year,” White said.

Albia   004  011  5  – 11  8  1

Solon   000  200  0  –  2   7  4

Jena Lawrence and Alex Beard; McKenna Miller, Kayla West (4) and Jess Heick.

W – Jena Lawrence    L – McKenna Miller

2B – ALB: Alex Beard, Hannah Isley. SOL: Taylor Ryan

HR – SOL: Alex Beard.