PICKERINGTON “Just win.” “Just win, baby.”
That’s all Strasburg softball head coach Bud Weisgarber said from the start of the No. 3 state-ranked Tigers’ tournament run.
It only took 15 innings for Strasburg to get the latest win -- over Portsmouth Clay Wednesday night -- as the Tigers came out of this Division IV Regional Semifinal game at Pickerington Central High School with a 5-4 victory.
No. 3-ranked Strasburg (21-5) will face No. 5 Danville at noon on Saturday at Pickerington Central for the chance to make it to a state semifinal.
It is a rematch of last year's regional semifinal where the Blue Devils prevailed.
“These kids just don’t give up -- they fight to the end,” said Weisgarber, who’s in his 34th year at Strasburg, the only head coach that the program has had.
Both teams battled to the very end, with each team not wanting their season to come to an end. The extra eight innings played featured everything you could imagine in a softball game. Home runs, great defensive plays, runners thrown out at home, errors, passed ball, bad and good base running, and team work. It was a game for the ages.
The biggest moment of the game came in the top of the 15th, when Emma Clark, who had struggled at the plate all game, blasted a 2-0 pitch over the centerfield fence. A no-doubter.
“Completely due,” Weisgarber said about Clark’s game-winning home run. “I told her to stay level cause she kept going with that uppercut swing like in slow pitch. She stayed level on that one.”
Clark, who was hitless in her previous five at-bats, had two hits in her first two plate appearances. Her two-run double in the first inning gave the Tigers a 2-0 lead. She finished 3-for-7 in the game.
“I was tired of hearing him complain about it,” said Clark, laughing about Weisgarber’s comments on her upper cutting. “So I figured I better fix it.”
Another star for the Tigers in this marathon was starting pitcher Zoey Thomas, who pitched all 15 innings. She allowed four runs on 14 hits, with two walks and 11 strikeouts. She basically pitched two games in one.
“A little exhausted,” Thomas said after the game, with her whole arm and shoulder wrapped in ice.
“About the 12th or 13th inning it started to kick,” she said about when she started to feel exhausted.
Weisgarber will give the ball back to Thomas on Saturday as the Tigers try for 14 wins in a row.
The Panthers, who gave their all to win the game, had more chances in extra innings to win than the Tigers.
Clark’s home run would never have been possible if it wasn’t for a big play by centerfielder Ava Ray, who threw a bullet to catcher Hannah Reifenschneider. She applied the tag on the potential winning run by Clay in the bottom of the 14th.
Clay’s big hitter was Jensen Warnock, who had four hits on the night, including two home runs. After Strasburg took the lead in the top of the 10th at 4-3, Warnock hit her second homer to tie it at 4-4.
Neither team scored over the next four innings.
Strasburg has won its last three games by one run, including a bottom of the seventh walk-off.
“It’s amazing what these girls have done. They won’t ever give up," said Weisgarber.