Marengo Academy runs to softball state championship

MONTGOMERY, Alabama – Marengo Academy’s improbable run through the state tournament looked to be in dire straits early in the final game Saturday before a surprise move by coach Chris Petrey shifted tenor of the contest. Mary Grace Sheffield moved from second base to the pitcher’s circle to anchor a 3-1 victory over Abbeville and the Longhorns’ first softball state championship since 2013

“That’s huge. We put her in a real, real bad spot. She had no idea that she was going to pitch. We didn’t even talk about her pitching today,” Petrey said.

Sheffield, a freshman, entered the game in the bottom of the first with the bases loaded and nobody out. After walking the first batter she saw, Sheffield was virtually unhittable for the remainder of the afternoon. She went one to strike out five batters and allow only one hit, a flare down the left field line in the sixth.

“The next one to go to was Mary Grace. It caught her off guard. She hadn’t thrown a pitch all weekend, not even a warmup,” Petrey said. “But to come in with the bases loaded, no outs and to get out of that with only one run and let that be the only run that scored all game, that was huge. She’ll grow from that and God only knows what she’ll be in three years.”

Fittingly, the final out of the game was a comebacker that Sheffield knocked down, picked up out of the dirt and threw to first baseman Mary Jordan Drake before thrusting her hands to the top of her head and dropping to her knees in elation.

The Longhorns jumped up in the top of the first inning. Sheffield legged out a bunt single ahead of Riley Newton duplicating the feat to put two runners aboard. Eventual tournament MVP Macey Petrey hit an infield single to drive in Sheffield for the 1-0 lead. Trinity Wilkinson followed with a single through the left side to plate Newton and Petrey to make it 3-0.

The Longhorns, who lost the previous game to Abbeville 8-6 to force the decisive final contest, had won the coin toss but elected to bat first rather than following the conventional logic of being the home team.

“Every tournament we’ve been to this year, home and visitor has been decided by a coin toss. If I’ve won the coin toss, I take visitor because I know if I lose the coin toss I’m going to be visitor anyway. My mindset is: what better way to put somebody on their heels than to go out and put a couple of runs on them in the top half of the first inning,” Petrey said of the decision. “That has become the team’s mindset. We don’t wait for that last at-bat to do it. We start from the beginning and stay on top and pound them from the beginning.”

Abbeville got its lone run of the contest from Allie Cain, who scored on Shelby Wood’s bases-loaded walk.

The previous contest saw Marengo down 8-4 in the bottom of the seventh when Sheffield tripled and scored on Newton’s grounder to short. Petrey followed with a solo homer to cut the margin further but the Longhorns could draw no closer. The late flurry colored Petrey’s decision heading into the final game.

“We went out with a lot of momentum in that last inning. I just told them to take that momentum and carry it into the next game. The first game was kind of a freebie if you want to say that. We just needed to keep our momentum and keep our drive,” Petrey said. “We knew their pitchers were getting tired. We knew what their weaknesses were as far as us on the base paths. We knew we could run on them pretty good and we utilized that. They didn’t get down. They took that momentum from the last inning of the earlier game and they carried it into that one. It got us a three-spot in the first inning and that was enough to kind of get them on their heels and we were able to keep them there.”

The Longhorns earned their way into the final round by downing Abbeville 6-4 in the final winners’ bracket game of the day. Abbeville in turn defeated reigning state champion Patrician 4-3 to emerge from the losers’ bracket. The team’s traded punches but the Longhorns were largely done in by their inability to find the strike zone as they issued seven walks in the contest. Netwon singled home Jessie Flowers and Drake in the third before Petrey’s sacrifice fly plated Sheffield but the offense came only in bursts as Abbeville controlled the entirety of the contest. Flowers later legged out an infield hit to score Mary Kendall Glass and narrow the gap to 7-4 before the offensive flurry that fell short.

The Longhorns played their way into prime position Friday with a 13-3 win over Crenshaw and a 5-3 defeat of Patrician, a team who had bested them seven times this season.

“We’ve known all year long Patrician has just had our number. We haven’t been able to get off our heels with them. We’ve had some real competitive games with them, but we just haven’t had that one little break to go our way. Yesterday they just came out with fire. They knew what was at stake. They knew what the easier route to the championship was and they jumped on them fast. We were able to get on top and stay there,” Petrey said.

The 4-1 tournament run capped a 6-2 postseason stretch that followed the Longhorns 17-17 season. For Petrey and his crew, however, the record never much mattered in evaluating their staying power in the AISA’s most important weekend.

“You can look at the wins and losses and being 17-17 coming into the [postseason] but we pushed the envelope as far as who we play. You’ve got to realize that every time we made out a lineup, we had four or five kids that are ninth, eighth or seventh grade. The numbers of upperclassmen just weren’t there. We played with some younger talent,” Petrey said. “We pushed them. We went to some tournaments that we probably shouldn’t have competed in on paper.  We matched up with some 3A teams, some of the best 2A teams. We put ourselves in those positions and that created an atmosphere that we can compete with anybody. Win or lose, we knew we can compete. That was kind of the attitude coming in. It wasn’t about the record up to, it’s just when you peak and when you play. That’s kind of what got us through this tournament.”

The state championship is the second of the 2016-2017 academic year for Marengo Academy and the resumption of a long-standing run of success by the softball program in particular.

“Marengo does have a long history of championships. Last year was the first year in many years that we weren’t here, but the championship mindset was still there,” Petrey said. “We’re a small school. We’ve only got 209 kids, give or take, K-12. But we had a 1A championship in football this year. Our boys are playing for the A championship in baseball Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s a give it all you’ve got, nothing short of winning type of attitude. We knew going in that we’re not going to win them all, but as long as we take the good from one game to another, win or lose, that we can compete. That’s what we tried to get the girls to do all year: believe in yourself, believe in your teammates. That’s what they did.”

All-Tournament honors went to Sheffield, Drake, Petrey and Hannah Freeman.