Gretna reaches Group A softball championship game

By Ted Allen

Published: June 6, 2008

RADFORD — Rather than graduating in the football stadium with the rest of their class at 9 this morning, the six seniors on Gretna’s softball team will celebrate their commencement at home plate at Radford University, prior to the first pitch of their Group A state championship game against Glenvar at 10 a.m.
On Friday against James River, the Hawks (20-4) kept their rally caps on from Tuesday’s quarterfinal, when they scored four runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to beat Middlesex 5-4. They squeezed three hits between three strikeouts to score one run in the bottom of the first before taking advantage of three of the Knights’ four errors to add runs in the third and fifth for a 3-0 victory.
“Our goal was to graduate on the softball field,” said Gretna senior Teresa Dalton, who pitched a two-hitter with 12 strikeouts, twice as many as Knights’ senior Abbie Rexrode. “I didn’t even have an outfit for graduation. Now I get to wear my softball uniform and my cleats. That’s perfect.”
“At this point, it’s completely surreal,” Gretna fourth-year coach Ketina Brooks added.
Facing Rexrode, who will follow former Knight Angela Tincher to Virginia Tech, the Hawks were not intimidated. With Tincher, the USA Softball national collegiate player of the year who will serve as her pitching coach next spring, in attendance, Rexrode may have felt more pressure.
“She’s a really good pitcher,” said Dalton, who reached on a comebacker in the first before being hit on the hand by a Rexrode pitch in the fifth. “For us to beat her shows we can beat anybody. We knew we had to stay up at the plate and be aggressive, hit the first pitch that we like.”
That’s exactly what Cheryl Crews did in her first at-bat, chopping a first pitch over Rexrode up the middle to drive in Nicole Mills, who had reached on an infield slap hit to start the first-inning rally.
“That was really exciting,” Crews said. “We were on (Rexrode) all day. I think (Altavista ace) Brooke Short was a little faster than she was. We’ve been practicing all week off the batting machine and we got the bats cracking today.”
“To score in the first inning, that got the momentum going for us,” Brooks added.
Dalton got out of her only jam in the top of the first unscathed. After Rexrode, the Knights’ leadoff batter, blooped a single to shallow center and advanced to third with one out, she struck out Kallie Cox swinging and Lauren Osborne looking to end the inning.
Ceseley Haynes and Savanna Butts reached on errors by James River’s shortstop to lead off the third and fifth innings, respectively, before scoring insurance runs, with Butts coming home after Mills’ bloop single bounced past the center fielder.
The Hawks, who were anxious early in Tuesday’s game, committing four errors in the rain, showed no such nerves on Friday, racking up six hits and playing error-free ball in 90-plus-degree heat.
“It wasn’t easy (but) we were very relaxed today,” Brooks said. “We were having fun.”
“We didn’t take this team lightly, but this game seemed to come pretty naturally for us,” added Raquel Martin, who will follow Brooks’ lead to Virginia next fall, with no plans to play softball. “We came out here to play ball (and) every inning we were hitting.”
James River coach John Shotwell was surprised to see Gretna’s batters catch up with Rexrode’s near-60 m.p.h. offerings.
“They were hitting everything Abbie threw up there,” Shotwell said of Rexrode, who struck out 1,210 in her career. “They were able to get around on her inside pitches. They weren’t putting a lot of zip on it, but they were hitting it.”
“We just wanted to put the ball in play and see what happened,” Brooks added.
Meanwhile, Dalton got into her rhythm early and benefited from a generous strike zone to get ahead of most of James River’s hitters.
“I was working inside, outside, throwing offspeed pitches to keep them off balance,” she said.
“I tried to keep it low (and) I found the inside strike zone and I took advantage of it.”
“The strike zone today was a little different than normal,” Shotwell added. “We’re usually pretty disciplined about taking inside pitches (but) if we didn’t swing at them today, they were strikes.”
After throwing their caps in the air following today’s pre-game graduation ceremony, the Hawks hope to be throwing their gloves in the air in a post-game celebration of their first state title.
While its football team has captured three state crowns in the last five seasons, the softball squad has never won one, despite advancing to the final twice previously — in 1978 and 1981, two months after Brooks was born.
“If we play ball like we did today, play our A game, it’s going to be tough to beat us,” Dalton said.
James River, winners of three of the past five state championships, took two out of three games this season from Glenvar, which beat Mathews 8-3 in Friday’s other semifinal.