AKRON — With Lebanon’s Tara Trainer in the midst of pitching a no-hitter on Saturday, Alyssa Rothwell entered the batter’s box to lead off the bottom of the eighth inning with modest goals against her counterpart.
“Trainer has outstanding movement on her pitches, especially with her rise ball,” Rothwell said. “She did a great job of getting ahead in the count and then getting us to chase the pitches she wanted us to.
“After striking out against her in my first two at-bats, I was focused on trying not to chase pitches outside of the strike zone. I wanted to put some good swings together and get on base.”
But when Trainer started Rothwell off with two balls in the at-bat, the Teays Valley junior felt like she had an advantage.
“As a pitcher, I know when you start off a batter with two balls that you want to throw a strike on the next pitch so you don’t fall behind 3-0 in the count,” she said. “Especially with being in a scoreless game, you don’t want to let the lead off hitter get on base.
“I felt like I was going to get a decent strike to swing at there, so I focused in on making a good swing.”
Rothwell did much more than put a good swing on the Trainer offering.
She made history.
Rothwell deposited a change-up over the center field fence, approximately 225-feet from home plate, for a walk-off home run to send the Vikings past Lebanon 1-0 in the Division I state championship game at Firestone Stadium.
“It was more than a decent strike,” Rothwell said. “Trainer missed on her location and it was a pretty good pitch to hit.
“I knew I hit it pretty well, but I wasn’t sure on how far it was going until I rounded first base. When it went over the fence for a home run, it was the greatest feeling in the world.”
The team state championship is the first in the history of Teays Valley, and it also marks the second-straight season a softball team from Pickaway County has hoisted the state’s ultimate prize.
Like its counterparts from Westfall in 2014, Teays Valley needed just one hit to win a state championship.
Teays Valley coach Brenna Giesige felt it was fitting that Rothwell came through with the offensive breakthrough, especially considering the game she was having in the pitching circle.
“Alyssa must have had a lot of confidence from the way she was pitching, so some of that confidence carried over to her at-bat there against Trainer,” she said. “I told her before the at-bat to shorten her swing a little bit and look for a good pitch to hit.”
Rothwell (17-7) pitched eight innings and allowed only one hit — a double by designated player Brianna Hutchinson in the sixth inning. She walked three batters, hit two and struck out seven.
“(Rothwell) threw a lot of strikes early in the count and had us behind for most of the game,” Lebanon coach Brian Kindell said. “We really didn’t hit anything square.
“We also couldn’t get our leadoff hitter on base so we could work on manufacturing a run.”
Lebanon’s best opportunity to score came in the sixth.
Trainer walked with two outs and Hutchinson followed with a double to left.
Kirsten Reed then hit a grounder back up the box that appeared ticketed for center field, but shortstop Hannah Giammarino ranged to her left to field the ball and fired a strike to first baseman Raelynn Hastings to retire Reed and keep the game scoreless.
“I knew that Lebanon’s hitters were late on the ball most of the time, so I shaded more to the middle so I had a better chance to get balls hit that way,” Giammarino said. “Shading that way helped me to make that play, then I adjusted my body to make a perfect throw over to first base.”
Giesige raved about Giammarino’s play and the defensive effort of the Vikings as a unit.
“I was a little worried that the grounder was a little out of Hannah’s range, but she made a great play coming across the diamond and making an accurate throw,” she said. “Overall, I felt like our defense stood on its head.
“Each of our infielders made a good play over the course of the game, and then our outfielders did a great job of running down a few fly balls where they had to cover a lot of ground. Alyssa’s pitching and our defense kept us in the game and gave us the opportunity we had to win in the eighth.”
The Vikings (24-9) needed both Rothwell and their defense to be stellar against Trainer.
Trainer, who has signed with Indiana, was named Ohio’s Gatorade Player of the Year earlier in the week and entered the state championship game with a 19-0 record, a microscopic 0.27 earned run average and 260 strikeouts.
The Lebanon senior struck out 10 of the first 11 batters she faced against Teays Valley and had a perfect game entering the seventh inning.
Giammarino broke up the perfect game when her bunt in front of the plate to lead off the bottom of the inning was fielded by Reed and subsequently thrown down the right field line, which allowed Giammarino to reach second.
The Vikings had their first chance of the game to dent the plate, but Trainer made sure Giammarino didn’t advance another inch.
Following a strikeout and a four-pitch walk to Hayden Ellis, Trainer caught a popped up bunt that she turned into a double play to end the inning by catching Ellis off first base.
“I felt pretty good coming out of that seventh, picking up the double play and getting out of that jam,” Kindell said. “We had the top of the order up but, once again, we just couldn’t get a leadoff hitter on.”
Rothwell retired the Warriors (33-1) in order and then came up to bat in the bottom of the eighth. She entered a state championship game batting .227 with one home run on the season, but has a past history of hitting home runs against elite pitchers. Rothwell hit two home runs last season off Bloom-Carroll’s Taran Alvelo, a Washington signee who is widely regarded as one of the best pitchers in the nation.”
“It’s in the back of your head that Alyssa has that ability when she squares up a pitch, but you’re thinking about her just getting on base, especially with Trainer having a no-hitter entering the inning,” Giesige said.
Trainer allowed just one hit and an earned run, walked a batter and struck out 14 in suffering her first loss of the season.
Rothwell’s round-tripper completed an improbable run by the Vikings, who were just 8-8 on April 29th, but have since wheeled off 16 wins in their last 17 games.
Teays Valley, seeded 21st out of 46 teams in the Central District, defeated the first, second, fourth and sixth seeds in the district to advance to the state tournament for the first time since 2004.
The Vikings continued their Cinderella run in Akron, defeating top-ranked Holland Springfield 4-1 in a state semifinal, then outlasting No. 2 Lebanon.
“Our run shows that anything is possible,” Giammarino said. “We’re the underdog team that nobody believed in except for ourselves.
“We became more than a team, we became family and we helped to make our community a family along the way. Now, we’re all winners.”
