ZIONSVILLE — As she stepped to the plate with the winning run on third and two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Westfield senior Reese Mahannah reached for the green Post-It note in her back pocket.
Mahannah’s teammates all had similar notes in their back pockets, each with reminders of a time they pulled through in a big moment.
“I wrote about the past three years, playing at sectionals and making the routine plays and not letting it get to me,” she explained as she pulled the folded Post-It from her pocket. “Every time there was a tough situation, I reached for my note and reminded myself we can do this.”
Three pitches later, Mahannah laid down the perfect squeeze bunt, dropping the ball between the pitcher and home plate, buying enough time for teammate Makayla Watson to score from third as she crossed first base, finishing out a wild come-from-behind 10-9 win over Carmel in the Class 4A Sectional 8 semifinals.
“Every inning it’s like it’s never guaranteed, so you have to give it your all: Each at-bat, each play, each pitch, because it may be your last,” Watson said. “Just coming up with that mentality helped us get through.”
“We’ve been down multiple innings the past two nights and we had that fight in us,” Mahannah added. “No one went up there thinking ‘this is it.’ We all knew we were going to get the job done, do whatever it takes.”
‘Back pocket’
Maddie Moore has been in plenty of big moments over the course of her softball career. A four-year starter at Noblesville, she was an All-BIG EAST talent at Butler, then entered the coaching ranks as an assistant at Earlham before taking over as Westfield’s head coach this spring.
Moore knows what it’s like to compete on the big stage, so as she prepared for her first sectional tournament as a coach, she pondered how to best prepare her players.
“The work’s been put in, right? It’s like when you take a big test — you can’t cram right before it,” Moore said. “You have to trust that you put the work in.”
Ahead of the team’s tournament opener vs. Zionsville on Monday, the first-year coach had her girls write on Post-It notes about a time when they were successful in a big moment during their career.
“Did you have a sacrifice bunt? Pitchers, did you hit your spot? Things like that,” Moore explained. “And I had them physically stick it in their back pocket, so some of the girls during the game, I’d say ‘back pocket’ so they knew they had been there before and they could be successful.”
After beating the host Eagles on a suicide squeeze in the bottom of the seventh, Moore took things a step further for Tuesday’s semifinal against Carmel. She and her assistants wrote down a time when they’ve seen their players be successful and hung them on the dugout wall in the shape of a W.
“We talked about how together we’re one and together we can all do this and step up in big moments,” Moore said.
That mindset, that mentality kept the Rocks grounded in Tuesday’s sectional semifinal vs. Carmel, a nine-inning marathon that saw the state’s 14th-ranked team trailing 5-1 in the fifth and required multi-run comebacks in the seventh and ninth to extend their season.
“I never saw them get scared,” Moore said. “They were confident. They were excited. And they had belief in themselves and each other.”
The squeeze gambit
Westfield found itself on the brink in the bottom of the ninth.
The Greyhounds plated two runs in their half of the inning, with the tie-breaking run scored on a Chloe Junkersfeld sacrifice fly, finishing out an absolutely electrifying performance by the freshman outfielder: 3-for-3 with a homer, a double, a walk, four RBIs and a run scored.
“I definitely think people were scared, but we knew we had what it takes to win,” said senior second baseman Sofia Easterhaus, who had two hits, two RBIs and a run, plus an eighth-inning web gem in the field.
“We might have had doubt within ourselves, but we didn’t let that control our energy,” continued Watson (four hits, three runs). “It always felt like we were on top in the dugout.”
Westfield halved the margin with back-to-back one-out doubles by Dylan Todd and Sydney Jordan, then paired a Watson single with an Easterhaus sacrifice fly to tie the score at 9.
Moore had an idea of what third-base coach Matt Moore, her dad, might signal for once the count reached 1-1 on Mahannah.
They’re on the same wavelength with these things, she explained, and while it — a squeeze bunt — was risky, they wanted to apply pressure on the defense.
The gambit paid off.
Mahannah’s bunt rolled back to the pitcher, who instinctively threw home instead of taking the force play at first, though with how quickly Mahannah broke from the box, she may have beaten the throw anyway.
Watson slid in safely and the celebration was on.
Two games, two come-from-behind wins decided on a squeeze bunt in the final frame.
“They have fight, they believe in each other, they believe in us, we believe in them and we have fun together,” Moore smiled. “I met the girls at Starbucks this morning and it’s just — I enjoy sitting around and hanging out with them. We have fun together. THen I left and they were still hanging out by themselves — they love being around each other. They want to be around each other. And they want to fight. They’re not backing down.”
Up next
Westfield plays Noblesville in the sectional championship game at 6 p.m. Thursday. It’s a reunion of sorts for the Moore family — Deke Bullard coached Maddie in high school and Matt was one of his assistants for almost 10 years.
Asked if he foresaw Moore calling for the squeeze in the bottom of the ninth, Bullard smiled and immediately replied: “Oh, absolutely.”
“Maddie’s done a phenomenal job at Westfield,” he continued. “Brian (Revercomb) did a great job turning the culuture around and Maddie’s come in and added to it and brought her own style. … They’re only going to get better with her in charge and (Matt) on staff, which is exciting for her and good for them. They’ve had a heck of a year.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Westfield pulls victory from its back pocket in wild sectional softball semifinal
Reporting by Brian Haenchen, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
