LYONS — Kaylee Stoner lay on third base, gasping for air.
She had just taken second and third base on an Emily Lingle sacrifice, only to be clattered by Parkland’s covering left fielder. It was the bottom of the eighth inning in a game Lower Dauphin seemed to have lost hours ago. Yet Stoner was 60 feet away from a Falcons victory.
She stayed on. Head coach Steve Alcorn told her he would call for the suicide squeeze. Two intentional walks and a Shelby Alcorn bunt later, Stoner sprinted home – safe. The left fielder who had flattened her flung her glove into the infield and trudged past it.
Stoner joined her teammates streaming out of the dugout, celebrating the Falcons’ first-ever trip to the State final and eight unanswered runs that beat previously undefeated Parkland, 8-7, in the AAAA softball semifinal at Lyons Field.
“I told these girls in the beginning of the season they had something special,” Lower Dauphin head coach Steve Alcorn said.
He paused to wipe away a budding tear. After the loss of his cleanup hitter and second pitcher, two hours and twenty minutes of softball and 271 pitches, he was all but choking.
“I didn’t know it was going to be this.”
Bottiglia fatigue
Ava Bottiglia’s first pitch was her 172nd in four days. She threw 76 on Friday and 96 in a travel game on Saturday.
For the first four innings of Monday’s semifinal, it showed.
“I had a job on the team: to pitch and strikes,” Lower Dauphin freshman Bottiglia said. “And I wasn’t doing it.”
Parkland batters waited slightly longer on Bottiglia’s changeup. The timely hitting that led Lower Dauphin to the State semifinals had faded. The Falcons’ typically suffocating defense couldn’t contain enough of the shots the Trojans smacked through the infield. It was too much for Lower Dauphin’s season to continue.
Bottiglia walked five of the first 26 batters through four innings. Lower Dauphin trailed 7-0.
“There was no backing down at that point,” Falcons catcher Shelby Alcorn said.
Bottiglia adjusted, overcompensated for and finally fixed her hand placement and release point. Still, as she caught the last out of the top of the fifth inning, there was no celebration. Her team was losing 7-1.
But with three Falcons runs in the fifth, one in the sixth and two in the seventh, capped by No. 8 hitter Jamie Knaub lining a two-run double to center field, Bottiglia took the pitchers’ circle for the top of the eighth like she was polishing off warmups.
She struck out the first two batters — the second went looking on an outside change-up. Bottiglia forced a groundout with her 148th pitch of the day.
“That’s what my dad always says, ‘dig deep,’” Bottiglia said.
Three short, one away
Lower Dauphin’s lineup has barely changed in the Falcons’ run through the State playoffs. But on Monday, the Falcons were missing cleanup hitter and designated player Sam Gorman, second pitcher Tiffany Grubb as well as reserve Colleen Starsinic.
“There were three seniors that decided to leave and go to the beach, so they’re no longer part of the team,” head coach Alcorn said.
Madison Kotchey moved into the cleanup position, bumping up one spot, and every hitter after her in Lower Dauphin’s lineup did the same. Ruth Chambers took Gorman’s place as designated player and hit ninth.
Chambers doubled, reached on a fielder’s choice and drew walks in the sixth and seventh innings.
“She swung the bat well for us during the season in a tournament and I thought, ‘Why not?’” Alcorn said.
Twenty-three minutes after game’s last pitch, squeals burst out of the Lower Dauphin team bus. Silently, Parkland’s had already ducked out.
Neither team had surrendered a run in the state playoffs until Monday. At 3:43 p.m., when the Falcons’ bus rocked out of the gravel lot across the road from Lyons Field, 15 lit up the newly installed scoreboard.
Said Shelby Alcorn: “We have to [win States]. We came this far, we’ve practiced so hard throughout the whole season. We deserve it.”