Mid-Prairie falls to West Liberty in softball playoff

Coach's cousin hits pair of home runs for 9th-ranked Comets

By Paul D. Bowker
Posted 7/7/21

WEST LIBERTY

A season’s finish turned into a powerful emotional moment.

Myah Lugar, the only senior on Mid-Prairie’s softball team, tearfully hugged teammates Katelyn Schneider, …

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Mid-Prairie falls to West Liberty in softball playoff

Coach's cousin hits pair of home runs for 9th-ranked Comets

Posted

WEST LIBERTY

A season’s finish turned into a powerful emotional moment.

Myah Lugar, the only senior on Mid-Prairie’s softball team, tearfully hugged teammates Katelyn Schneider, Madeline Schrader and DeLanee Patterson just behind first base.

A 10-1 loss to ninth-ranked West Liberty in the Class 3A Region 8 quarterfinals on Tuesday night ended the Golden Hawks’ season.

Not that the Golden Hawks went quietly. The shouting and the clapping echoed from Mid-Prairie’s dugout until the final out.

“In the seventh inning, down 10-1, on the road to a phenomenal pitcher, top 10 team, and they continue to fight and they’re cheering for their teammates, that’s all you can ask. It really is,” said Mid-Prairie head coach Matt Hoeppner, who led the Golden Hawks to a 10-win season and a sixth-place finish in the River Valley South.

Hoeppner had a good idea of the challenge facing the Golden Hawks. Finley Hall, who hit two home runs to drive in five runs, and Sailor Hall, the Comets’ pitcher Tuesday, are cousins on his wife’s side of the family.

“They’re good kids,” said Hoeppner, who coached them in basketball because he is the head girls basketball coach at West Liberty. “I’m out here trying to beat them and they’re trying to beat me, just like any other team on our schedule.”

Sophie Baker scored the Golden Hawks’ only run in the fourth inning, coming home on a single by Landy Pacha. Baker was the courtesy runner for Mid-Prairie freshman catcher Hannah Sellers, who had begun the inning by hitting a double.

That run cut West Liberty’s lead to 6-1, but the Comets added another run in the bottom half of the fourth inning and three in the fifth.

The Golden Hawks had two runners on base in the first inning on a single and a walk, and another on base in the second, but West Liberty pitcher Sailor Hall slammed the door, striking out four Golden Hawk in the first three innings.

“I thought we played well,” Hoeppner said. “We had runners, I believe, every inning except for maybe just two where we went one-two-three. But we had girls out there all night and just couldn’t get them to get one more hit in each inning or that one error by them to get us over the hump. … We came out and again competed at a high level, which is all I’ve asked all year.”

Finley Hall put the Comets up 2-0 in the first inning with a towering home run over the right field fence, then hit another homer in her next at-bat in the third inning with two runners on.

Mid-Prairie’s loss ended a season in which the Golden Hawks won 10 games for the first time since 2017, and raised promise for the future considering eight of the team’s starters were underclassmen – two of them eighth-graders, Dakota Mitchell and Brenna Jehle.

Mid-Prairie, softball, playoff