By Matt Turer — mturer@ky3.com
@MattTurer
Springfield, Mo. — Zoey Mullings stepped onto spring softball’s biggest stage and tossed the game of her life.
So far.
“I’d like to call it that, but we get to see her one more year,” Strafford head coach Dale Bean said of his junior ace. “But unbelievable the way she pitched these last two games. Unlike anything I’ve seen from her this year.”
Mullings all but completely shut down Purdy’s high-octane lineup in Sunday’s spring softball state championship, striking out eight Lady Eagles while allowing two hits and two walks over seven innings in Strafford’s 3-0 win at Killian Softball Complex.
The Lady Indians used a three-run fourth inning sparked by a leadoff home run by Rilie Vote to build all the cushion Mullings would need on the mound.
“This is incredible,” Mullings said. “I know we’ve won two [championships] for basketball, but just coming out here and being the leader and the one who’s pushing us is just tremendous. I’m so incredibly proud of all my teammates and them backing me up when I wasn’t doing my best [earlier this season].”
CLICK HERE FOR STRAFFORD VS. PURDY PHOTOS
Mullings and Purdy ace Hallie Henderson traded shutout innings on the mound until Vote’s home run over the left-field wall to leadoff the fourth.
“Honestly I struggled with [Henderson] the past two times we played her,” Vote, who was 0-6 with three strikeouts against Henderson in 2017 before Sunday’s home run, said. “We were all just swinging around the ball with long swings, so I thought, why not slash and go short-to-it long-through-it, then I hit it and I was like, well that could go, and it did. It just rallied us.”
It rallied Strafford (25-1) and shook the normally unshakable Henderson.
Hayley Frank and Samantha Gott followed Vote’s solo shot with a pair of hard-hit singles. Then Alissa Collette smacked a double into the right-field gap for a pair of RBIs to push the gap over Purdy (27-2) to 3-0.
“She just missed her spot and that kid (Vote) cranked that ball out,” Purdy head coach Lori Videmschek said. “[Strafford] is a good team. You can’t leave a ball in the middle of the plate and she just tattooed that ball.
“I think after that she (Henderson) had a hard time getting back in the groove and that sort of hurt us a little bit.”
Henderson settled down after Collette’s double, striking out 12 and allowing just one more hit over the final three innings in a complete-game effort that came just a day after no-hitting Lincoln in the semifinals.
But the bats that scored nearly 12 runs per game this season for Purdy never showed up to back up Henderson (23-2).
“We didn’t play well today,” Videmschek said. “You’ve got to give [Mullings] credit, she did what she needed to do, but this is probably one of our worst batting performances of the year. We were swinging at bad pitches and we just weren’t disciplined at the plate. That’s what really hurt us.”
Only Casey Ellison and McKenzie Renkoski managed to gather hits off Mullings, and only Ellison’s left the infield.
Videmschek also expressed disappointment at her group’s energy in the field against a Strafford team that’s no stranger to championship-level stages with a large majority of its roster having been on the past two Class 3 girls state championship basketball teams.
“I thought they had more energy than our kids did,” Videmschek said. “They’re diving for balls all over the place and we’re letting balls drop. That’s the difference in the win. I told the kids, 72 days ago they won a state championship in basketball. They know what it takes to win and we haven’t got that figured out yet, but we will. We did some remarkable things this year. I’m very proud of them.”
Mullings (16-1) needed just 83 pitches over seven innings, throwing 62 of those pitches for strikes.
“I just go out there and do what I’ve been taught and do what I’ve been doing. Don’t overthrow or do anything fancy. Just go back to the fundamentals,” she said.
“I could probably count on one hand the amount of times she missed with a pitch these last two games,” Bean said of Mullings. “She was that good. I mean tough as nails.”
Strafford finished the 2016 spring softball season undefeated before being upset by eventual state champion Mt. Vernon in their district championship.
“To come back and make it all the way through with these girls my last time here is an amazing feeling,” Vote said. “It’s indescribable.”
Strafford and Purdy entered Sunday’s state final with a loss apiece, with each team’s loss coming at the hands of the other during a three-day stretch back in late March. That history set up what was maybe the most highly anticipated final in the four-year history of the spring softball championship.
“After we beat them (in the second game in March) I was like, OK we can do this, we can win it. Because we’ll probably see them in the Final Four. I just had so much confidence going into this game,” Mullings said.
