Holy Trinity advances in regional play

"We felt like we were right there a couple of times, but just didn’t quite get over the hump as far as the 10-run rule goes.””

Loren Menke, HTC head coach

WEST POINT — Holy Trinity’s two wins over New London during the regular season lasted just seven innings.
But Crusaders coach Loren Menke has been around long enough to know the postseason always makes its own story.
Holy Trinity needed all seven innings of Friday’s Class 1A Region 8 first-round game to defeat New London, taking a 10-5 win at South Park.
The Crusaders (11-11) advanced to Wednesday’s 7 p.m. quarterfinal at No. 8 Sigourney.
Holy Trinity had defeated New London (2-23) by a combined score of 25-0 in the regular season.
But the Tigers struck first, scoring a run in the top of the first inning, and had runners in scoring position in five of the seven innings.
“I didn’t think this game would be like those other games, to be honest,” Menke said. “I mean, New London has a lot of pride. They’ve always had a good softball program. And they came here ready to play. They didn’t give up. They had a good strategy — they were putting the ball in play and it worked for them. They got some runs out of that.”
Menke said he talked to his team about not taking the Tigers lightly.
“We’ve been talking about that for a week,” he said. “But sometimes it’s easier said than believed.”
Still, the Crusaders’ offense was relentless. Holy Trinity scored in the first five innings, and had a chance to end the game by the 10-run rule in the fifth before the Tigers were able to escape the inning, leaving a runner at third base.
“We felt like we were getting on base every inning,” Menke said. “We just never got that real big inning. We felt like we were right there a couple of times, but just didn’t quite get over the hump as far as the 10-run rule goes.”
New London got two runs in the sixth inning, then the seventh inning got interesting when two runners scored on a two-out error by the Crusaders. But Kathryn Lee popped out to first baseman Rachel Menke to end the game.
Loren Menke gave credit to New London pitcher Sophie Malott, who came into the game having thrown just 7 2/3 innings.
“They just brought her in to pitch here in the last couple of games, and she kept us off-balance,” Menke said.
Halie Cain, Kayla Box, Mary Hellige, Rachel Menke and Emmalyn Snaadt each had two hits for the Crusaders. Hellige was the winning pitcher.
Now the Crusaders will face Sigourney pitcher Carly Goodwin, who leads the state with an 0.27 earned run average and is second with 252 strikeouts.
“We’ve got to keep the score low,” Loren Menke said. “You’re not going to beat Goodwin 10-9. If you’re going to beat her, it’s going to be 1-0, 2-1. So hopefully we can scratch out a run or two, and play well defensively.
“We believe in ourselves. So we’re going to go in there, play with a lot of pride. We know we’re the underdog, but New London was the underdog tonight and they played us tough. And we plan to do the same thing on Wednesday.”