Thorndale High School’s most dominant team in the school’s history is headed to the UIL 2A State Softball tournament, after mercy ruling perennial power house Weimar 21-6, 14-4 in the Region IV finals last week.
The Lady Bulldogs will play in their first state-semifinal tournament against Windthorst at noon Wednesday in Austin at the UT Austin Red & Charline McCombs Field, which is something that has been 11 years in the making, according to head coach Lance Betak.
“It’s not like we just popped up and all of the sudden had a really good softball team,” said Betak. “I’ve talked to several people who used to play for us and we talked about how they were a part of this as well.”
Betak has coached the Lady Bulldogs for 11 seasons and has led them to regionals four of the last five years.
“I learned a lot of things along the way from players to help build a better program which has led to us having high expectations now. We have players doing a lot of work on their own,” he said. “It’s been a tough road to finally get here but it sure has been worth it. Everyone around town is fired up including myself.”
Thorndale has been dominant this year with junior Riley White from the circle who is 31-2 this season. They also have a powerful offense led by freshman Emilee Baker who has a batting average of .474 and White, who is hitting .472. Other THS players hitting over .400 are freshman Kelsey Kovar who bats .469 and junior Jayci Martinka is at .404.
THS now moves on to UIL Class 2A softball championships where they will face Windthorst in the state-semifinals. Betak says the Trojanettes have many similarities to his own team.
“Windthorst is pretty much a mirror image of us,” He said. “They’re solid in the field and they’re aggressive at the plate and on the bases.”
“We’ll have to do what we’ve been doing all season and try to be aggressive. Because if you put pressure on defense that increases the possibility that they might make a mistake.”
The Trojanettes are 32-6 this season and are led from the circle by junior pitcher Laynie Brown who has only given up four or more runs three times this season. Classmates Kora Pennartz and Abby Brown have been dominant at the plate this season. Pennartz has a batting average of .526 and Brown is hitting .492 and has five home runs and 51 RBI’s.
Windhorst went to three games with District 8-2A rival Archer City in the Region I finals in Wichita Falls this past weekend. The Trojanettes won the first game 9-0 over Archer and lost game two 5-4 but they closed out the series 11-1 in six innings on Saturday.
“I’ve been telling our girls after beating Weimar that ‘we got here’,” Betak said. “And I know we have a lot of younger players but you never how things are going to work out. This an opportunity now to win it all.”
The Lady Bulldogs will face Windthorst at noon Wednesday at the Red and Charline McCombs Field in Austin. If the Lady Bulldogs win, they will play the winner of Crawford and West Sabine for the Class 2A state championship at 3 p.m. Thursday at McCombs.
ROAD TO STATE –
Thorndale is 32-5 this season and went undefeated in District 27-2A play where they won by mercy-rule in seven of their 14 district games. They’ve also gone undefeated in the postseason and seven of their 10 post-season games were won by the mercy-rule.
They took down Wallis-Brazos High School 18-0, 12-1 in the bi-district round of the playoffs before run-ruling Deweyville High School 13-1, 10-0 in the area round at Tomball.
In the Region IV quarterfinals, THS swept Shiner 4-2, 3-2. The Lady Comanches were ranked second by the Texas Girls Coaches Association at the time and are the most dominant program in Texas High School softball with 12 trips to the state championship since 1996. Betak said they went into the contest treating Shiner like any other team they faced. In the Region IV semi-finals, Thorndale was able to get hits off of Riviera-Kaufer pitcher Madison Alegria to end the ‘Hawks’ season with their third sweep of the playoffs 11-1 and 10-3.
To clinch a trip to state, they took down Weimar 21-6 and 14-4 in La Grange this past Thursday and Friday. In game one, Thorn-dale ran away early with three in the first and five in the second. They cemented their lead with eight in the third and won 21-6 after five innings. White had three strikeouts and Baker dominated at the plate going four-for-five. Maddie Flores also had a good night batting with three hits and Jacey Paulsen, Kate Casey and White each had two hits. Ash Kiesling and Kovar both had one.
Game two had a much slower start for THS as the Lady Wildcats took an early lead in the first two innings. In the bottom of the fourth with the game tied at 4 the Lady Bulldogs went on a nine-run rampage boosted by two-run RBI’s by Baker and Kovar and one-run RBI’s by Paulsen and Madison Kelm. The Lady Bulldogs run-ruled Weimar 14-4 after six innings. White struck out four and Baker went four-for-four at the plate and Flores had three hits. Kelm, Kiesling, Paulsen, Kovar, White and Kate Casey each had one hit.
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