The W.F. West softball team needed a rally late, and it got one in its district loser-out game against Aberdeen on Friday.
But the Bearcats’ storybook ending came up one page short of a conclusion, and W.F. West’s season came to an end with an 8-7 loss to the Bobcats, keeping them out of the state tournament for the first time since 2003.
“The fight in these girls just never ended,” WFW coach Kevin Zylstra said. “It’s just sad to see it come to an end.”
The Bearcats went into the seventh inning down 8-4, needing four runs to tie before three outs with the bottom of the order coming up, and Chase White got things going with a one-out single.
Coming in as a pinch-hitter, senior Kallee Corey nearly left the yard out to center, settling for a double off the wall to put two in scoring position.
“My hat’s off to her for that,” Zylstra said.
That turned the lineup over, and Lena Fragner drove both White and Corey in with a double to halve the deficit. Brielle Etter made it 8-7 on a single, going to second on a throw home and reaching third when that throw got past the catcher.
That brought the heart of the order up with the tying run 60 feet away and still just one out on the board. But Aberdeen’s Lily Camp froze Avalon Myers on a 1-2 changeup, and on the very next pitch, Staysha Fluetsch ripped a shot down the first-base line that was caught in pure reaction more than anything else, ending the Bearcats’ season before anyone in the W.F. West dugout could blink.
“She just about ripped the glove off her hand, she hit it so hard,” Zylstra said.
The Bearcats scored all seven of their runs in the final four innings, taking a 3-2 lead briefly in the fourth before Aberdeen came back with a six-run frame.
W.F. West finished with 15 hits, more than doubling its foe in that column. Etter led the way with three knocks, while Fragner went 2 for 4 with a walk and four RBIs. Myers, White, and Rachel Gray all added two-hit outings.
But the hardest hit — before Fluetsch’s liner to end it — may have been a foul ball that drilled Zylstra in the third-base coach’s box in the sixth. The WFW skipper came back out from the dugout after a brief absence, but was bound for X-rays as soon as the game ended after working on pure adrenaline for the final frames.
“That last inning, I kind of spaced out,” he said. “I was hurting real bad.”
W.F. West’s season comes to an end with a 15-9 record. The Bearcats are set to graduate seven seniors, all of whom played Friday: Etter, White, Gray, Corey, Saige Brindle, Savannah Hawkins, and Izzy Vigre.
