Despite a rod in her right leg and two ankle screws remaining from her terrible softball injury in 2014, junior outfielder Ellie Ziegler returned to help the Oak Park and River Forest High School team to its first downstate trip since 2007.
“It’s something I take pride in. (The injury) was very, very traumatic and I’m just insanely happy to be back here playing,” Ziegler said. “It just feels like old times. To be out of it sucked, but I’m back and it was very fun to be back for high school.”
On Saturday, the Huskies made a collective comeback to capture third place at the Class 4A state tournament at EastSide Centre in East Peoria.
They went out with a bittersweet victory by beating Barrington 3-2 on two hits to earn third in the state. The Huskies (33-4) regrouped from Friday’s tough 2-1 semifinal loss to Marist, the eventual state champion.
“It was hard for us to get up this morning and say, ‘Man, we really want to play for third and fourth,’ but we’re like, ‘OK. We can’t go down with a loss,’ especially the seniors,” senior shortstop Taylor Arends said.
“I didn’t want to end this career on a loss. We’ve had a great year and I was so happy for us to end on a win.”
This is the Huskies’ first top-four trophy since their 2005 Class AA state championship. They came with an offense averaging more than 10 runs per game and a solid pitching duo of sophomore Chardonnay Harris (18-3) and junior Emily Richardson (15-1), already committed to Auburn and Valparaiso, respectively.
Friday marked the only time OPRF scored fewer than two runs this season. Marist (36-4-2) and senior pitcher Zariya Gonzalez (28-4) blanked Lincoln-Way East 1-0 in Saturday’s final.
“It’s a great group of kids so most of all I’m happy for them. (But) we wanted to be champs. They were all close games. Anybody could win it,” OPRF coach Mel Kolbusz said.
“Only eight teams in the state get to finish on a victory (first and third 1A, 2A, 3A and 4A). We’re one of those eight teams and that’s kind of a little feather in our cap. The victory gives us something to push off and build on for next year.”
The Huskies took a 1-0 lead against Marist in the top of the first inning. No. 2 hitter Ziegler smacked her team-best eighth home run.
“I really didn’t think it was going to go over,” Ziegler said. “It was awesome because it was like, ‘All right. We’re already ahead and we’ve just got to keep this going.’ I didn’t think one was going to be enough.”
Marist tied the game on a two-out, RBI single in the third and scored the winning run in the fifth against Harris on a one-out, bases-loaded single.
OPRF had seven hits, two each by Ziegler and Ireland Flannery. After OPRF twice stranded runners on third and second, Gonzalez, headed for Eckerd College, retired the last 10 batters.
“She’s tough. She’s not super fast, but she spins the ball a lot,” Kolbusz said. “She can move the ball horizontally and vertically so she kept us off balance a bit.”
On Saturday, OPRF overcame Loyola-bound senior Keenan Dolezal (31-8), Barrington’s all-time leader with 90 career pitching victories. The Huskies scored twice in the second and once in the fourth.
Junior pitcher Emily Richardson (15-1), who relieved during the fifth Friday, delivered a four-hitter with three strikeouts and had a shutout until a tense seventh.
The Fillies (32-8) scored on a bases-loaded wild pitch with one out and again on an infield ground out before Richardson coerced a game-ending ground out to freshman second baseman Maeve Nelson.
Richardson added an RBI single in the fourth after a leadoff walk to Harris. Caitlyn Santiago and Richardson walked to start the second and two runs followed, respectively, on a wild pitch and Nina Steele’s squeeze bunt that brought in courtesy runner Sydney Babbington.
“Sydney’s really fast and we had a mental thing going,” Steele said. “I went like this (showing the sign) and the other coach saw it, but it was still OK.”
The Huskies return 12 players, including both pitchers and catchers.
“We had such a good, winning season. Especially as a freshman, it’s awesome to experience this,” said Nelson, already committed to Northwestern. “It’s going to be hard for the rest of the seasons to live up to this because we’ve had so much fun playing with each other.”