South Central has no answer

Updated: May 31, 2011 10:32PM

AUBURN  — South Central never lost its fight, its belief, its enthusiasm.

Between and during innings, the Satellites players and coaches were encouraging each other, even when they fell behind Lakewood Park Christian in Tuesday’s softball regional.

And why not?

After all, South Central had staged a dramatic comeback to defeat Triton for a sectional title.

But there was no such rally this time for the Satellites, who fell 8-1 to the Panthers. Lakewood Park won its second straight regional title, and will play in Saturday’s Clinton Prairie Semistate.

“We never gave up at Triton, and I felt we could do that here the same way,” South Central coach Rich Patterson said. “We got runners on base, but we just couldn’t move them. We never gave up today, but we couldn’t string the timely hits together. At Triton, we did that. We just needed to hit the ball more today.”

The Satellites (18-12) opened the game with Jessica Sturdy’s double, and had runners on first and second with no outs in the sixth, but scored neither time. Their lone run came in the fifth — on Brittany Wright’s leadoff walk, Katie Bekavac’s infield single and Stephanie Balon’s sacrifice fly — but they had trailed 8-0 by that point.

South Central had expected the Panthers (23-5) to pitch freshman Mikeila Boroff and had prepared to face her, but instead saw Carly Heibel. And the senior generally silenced the Satellites, effectively using her offspeed pitches, allowing the one run on five hits with eight strikeouts (six in the first three innings) and two walks.

“She had some nice pitches,” Patterson said. “Her slow screwball threw us off-balance. It was really messing us up.”

After scoring an unearned run in the first, Lakewood Park broke open the game with four runs in the third, highlighted by Purdue recruit Alyssa Koorsen’s two-run single. That hit ended the senior Sturdy’s outing, with freshman Madisyn Walter taking over on the mound.

The Panthers added three more runs (two unearned) in the fourth, with Heibel hitting a two-run homer, a shot to left for her 12th of the season.

The Satellites had won their first sectional title since 2007, and Patterson was quick to note that they have eight juniors on their roster and freshmen such as Walter and catcher Kaitlyn Tucker.

“We had a great season, and we have a great core coming back,” he said.

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