MILLER CITY – Napoleon started at the bottom. At least its game-winning rally did.
The Wildcats stunned Wapakoneta 4-1 in the championship game of the Division II softball district at Miller City on Monday with a four-run uprising in the bottom of the sixth inning that began when its No. 9 hitter, Stevie Rieger, led off with only the second hit for her team up to that point.
Four more hits, including a two-run double by Taylor Rieger and a two-run home run by Missy Smith, followed in the inning and Wapakoneta saw its hopes for a district championship disappear.
A fourth-inning single by Taylor Rieger was the only hit Napoleon (16-6) got off Wapakoneta pitcher Megan Fisher before the sixth inning.
The Redskins (20-5) loaded the bases with one out in the top of the first inning on consecutive singles by Grace Jolly, Blasia Moyler and Savannah Oen but couldn’t convert those runners into a big inning.
Lexi Jacobs’ sacrifice fly after Oen’s hit produced the only run Wapakoneta would score.
The Redskins loaded the bases again with two out in the top of the sixth on a walk by Moyler, a single by Jacobs and an error on a grounder by Socorro Cerda. But Napoleon pitcher Allison Mack (4 strikeouts, 3 walks) got Makenzie Wilson to fly out to end the threat.
“They have a great hitting team. We knew they were going to hit the ball. We knew we were going to have to score more than one run to win the game,” Wapakoneta coach Bill Sammons said.
“We hit their pitcher all up and down the field, but we just hit it right at people,” he said, referring to several deep fly balls and line drive outs off the Redskins’ bats. “They had one inning where they jumped on us and sometimes it only takes one inning.”
Napoleon coach Ken Boland said, “We knew we could hang around well enough defensively and it was just a matter of time before the offense got started.
“We wanted to hit the ball hard up the middle. Sometimes they catch them. But we stayed with our game plan and it paid off in the end. There is no one I would rather have up in those situations (in the sixth inning) than Taylor and Missy,” he said.
Boland said Mack’s pitching approach was to throw a lot of off-speed pitches early in counts to try to neutralize Wapakoneta’s aggressive approach to hitting.
“They’re real aggressive early in the count, so we were trying to throw some off-speed pitches and stuff to keep them off balance. But she got behind early in the game, which gave them good counts to hit in,” he said.
“We talk about take care of the little things and big things will happen,” Boland said.
One of those big things is that Napoleon’s district championship is the school’s first in softball. “It was a big deal. This is kind of breaking through that glass ceiling, so to speak for our program,” he said.
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